The Happy Cow Report

Being Brave

2011-10-11T16:16:00.000-07:00

I had a round of errands to run today, so I decided to treat myself to lunch at the House of Bamboo while I was out. Their pad thai is awesome and I love supporting local people. The proprietress showed me to a table and as I sat she pointed to my necklace and said she liked it. I was wearing my Year of the Horse symbol. She said “very brave,” smiled and then left to get me water.

This was a moment of synchronicity since I had just realized how stuck in fear I have become in regards to looking for work. On my way to the restaurant, I passed by several shops. As I looked at clothes, and shoes and art work I thought about how much I liked some of the things I was seeing and how easy it was not to get caught up in materialism now that I am unemployed.

It suddenly occurred to me that—since I got knocked down to bare subsistence living, and then worked my way back to a modest abundance that still teeters on the edge of disaster—I am scared of going back to a larger abundance. I have seen a couple of jobs advertizing large salaries and I come up with all sorts of reasons to not even try for them: I don't want to work for another dysfunctional nonprofit that is struggling financially, administratively challenged, and saddled with enough challenging personalities that all work grinds to a halt. I don’t want to work that hard again and have nothing to show for it in the end. And, besides, I am not really qualified.

In actuality, it isn't any of those things. It is fear of success and fear of failure. I am safe in my new limbo world. I have food and shelter and some beauty and comfort. Why would I give that up for struggle and hard work and a likelihood of failure in a field fraught with fringe crazies and pathetic finances? Right now, no one expects too much from me so anything I do is wonderful. Right now I am only responsible for myself so I can only let myself down. I am scared that if I apply for these jobs I might get one, and then I might fail at it.

Failure is always a possibility. However, true failure is lacking imagination, insight and wisdom to learn from mistakes and losses.

In the past couple of months I have been remembering the picture that I used to draw when I was about five years old—a little troll girl, silently crying and holding a black and wilted flower. I clearly remember thinking the caption was “I kill everything I touch.” I don’t know where the picture or the conviction came from, but it has been with me all of my life—subtext for all of my relationships and career moves.

Now I am asking—what if I got it wrong? What if the message was not about me killing everything, but instead was about a path of compassion? A path of compassion can lead one to be there for many tragedies. A path of compassion can lead one to reach out to those who are most troubled, those who are most struggling, and those most likely to make little or no progress. It would be easy for a five year old to interpret myself as the cause, when really I was just the witness.

My little troll girl can stand as a picture, but I need to reinterpret the message. My heart is strong enough and kind enough to take on hard cases and difficult tasks. I am brave enough to stay open to challenging situations and relationships, and sturdy enough to endure the pain, confusion, fear, and anger in this world. I am tough enough to witness the depths of grief and also the heights of joy and the penetrating warmth of love. For nothing is permanent—not grief, nor anger, nor fear.

The woman at the restaurant had it right. I am very brave. And a few small moments of weakness and doubt and fear will not stop me. Not for long!

Time to go get some job applications in:)

My first day of acting class

2011-08-24T11:17:00.000-07:00

For those of you who do not know, I signed up for an acting class. Well, sort of. When I signed up, it was full so I was on the wait list and therefore not technically in the class yet. My friend Tempra told me about the class when she decided to try acting and, after some trepidation, I decided to sign up too.

We walked into a sea of people too young to go to bars. Signs on the walls told us we could not bring food or drink into the room and I had to walk through the middle of the room with my coffee cup in hand because that was the only way to access the seats where Tempra and I could sit together. It was eerily quiet so we “old folk” nervously chatted in near-whispers.

Actually, I was fine until the teacher walked in and said cheerily, “Are you ready to act?”
“Good God, no!” was my inner response. If I had been near the door I might have bolted. As it was, bolting would have first meant walking in front of all those people, so I stayed put. Besides, I wasn’t actually in the class yet, right?

You might be wondering why the hell I would sign up for something that I clearly find terrifying. Well, it all starts with me working my way through the book The Artist’s Way.

One of the first things this book works on is creative blocks. It sets out assignments designed to get us to find all of the people and events that block us from being creative. The book is for all types of artists—writers, painters, musicians, dancers, etc. Since I am a writer, that is the focus I brought to working through the book. Until recently, I have only been thinking of writing-related creative blocks. However, I recently remembered that my oldest aspiration was to be an actor. I remember drawing a picture of me on a stage and my mom writing down that I wanted to be an actor, dancer and singer. (I sort of saw them as all one thing at the time.) A couple of years later when I was reading and writing on my own, I added being a writer, but I continued to put together plays and dance performances for my family up until I was 12 or 13. Eventually I dismissed my acting dreams as a phase all little girls go through—not something to be taken seriously.

Before I decided this, I used to conscript my cousins to my various projects. I would choreograph dance performances and make my mom and Aunt Karen watch (I never understood why they had to be dragged in—my shows were much more entertaining than the endless talking they did!). I used to have this snake puppet that I made out of a sock at some arts and crafts summer program and I spent hours doing duets with the snake, singing along to Barbara Streisand or pop songs I taped off the radio (and, yes, I realize how dorky this was). I made up all sorts of stories to go along with the songs. Once I even wrote a whole musical using taped radio songs. Again, I conscripted the cousins who made a silly mess of my serious story line; no one else seemed able to share my vision!

Lately, I have been thinking it would be nice to have something more to offer the Rogue Theatre (as the only non-theater board member), but have not been able to find a non-acting niche. Early on, they asked me if I was interested in acting, and I told them I sucked at it so, no, I wasn’t interested. Now I am wondering if maybe this has all just been assumptions on my part.

Then I suddenly remembered that I actually was involved in theatre for many years growing up. I went to several acting workshops for kids with a community theatre group in town (I have no idea who, now), and I auditioned for small parts a couple of times. I also took drama in both junior high and high school. But I was never in a play. I have always assumed that meant the teachers could see I had no talent. That might have been the case. It might also have been that I just needed some work to draw me out, and the teachers just weren’t interested in digging. The kids that got cast were always the popular, outgoing kids. I was shy, reserved, quiet. It’s can be hard to see potential in that.

I have two acting memories that—even after all these years—still make me cringe. The first was when we were assigned to do monologues in class. I decided to do a short story that I wrote. The story was typically over-dramatic teenage angst. As a short story it was not too bad. As a monologue, not so much. Halfway through I got nervous and I froze up, completely forgetting the words. I found my place again, but couldn’t keep the emotion going, which might have made the monologue work. Instead it fell flat. So, the performance failed, and I left myself doubly vulnerable because it was my performance and my writing. For an already geeky, awkward and decidedly not popular teen, that certainly didn’t help.

Later that year we did auditions for the musical Oklahoma. I have no memory of actually auditioning but I know I did. Instead of getting a part, the teacher made me the director. At first I thought that was a great honor and opportunity, but she didn’t give me any instruction and she actually did all of the directing. I had to spend my free afternoons sitting around watching her direct the kids in rehearsal, feeling like a fifth wheel. She let me have a say here and there, but by the time the play was opening, I was completely deflated. I decided that she made me director not because she thought I would be good at it but because I was so bad at acting. Looking back now, maybe that was the reason, but maybe not.

I have so much emotional baggage tied to the subject that it is hard to say if I have any real interest in acting or not. But The Artist’s Way is not just about one form of creativity, and it is not about just one form of creative block. I realized that my creative block surrounding acting might be holding me back in all sorts of ways. Too often I am still that shy, reserved, quiet kid waiting to be ridiculed for speaking up, or verbally run over and overshadowed by flashier, more flamboyant folks. Too often I am timid and do not share what would actually be most welcome. This impacts everything I do—my career, my relationships, my social action work, as well as my writing. Maybe I need to work on this creative block before I will truly be able to move forward as a writer. Maybe I need to work on this creative block before I will be able to move forward in my career.

Which is why tonight I had my first acting class since high school. If I didn’t have a friend in the class, I probably wouldn’t go back, even though I made it off the wait list. It’s just too scary! You know how they say that every day you should do one thing that scares you? Well, I think this one might count for several months worth. But, even though I am scared, I am also excited to stretch beyond my current boundaries of Self. And that is a good thing.

No Good, Very Bad Day Zen Style

2011-07-01T13:55:00.000-07:00

Today was a no good, very bad day, just like the kids’ book says. Working at Jen’s Daycare—aka, Zen Bootcamp—gave the day a spiritual dimension. Not that this made it better. Or easier. Just more spiritual, for whatever that is worth!

Last night was my second night of sleep interrupted by bouts of pain. For the past decade and a half my uterus has picked up this habit of treating me to rounds of faux labor pains with contractions and all. The pain lasts about 20 minutes (although low-grade pain can linger for hours) and the rounds come every 4-6 hours. That means that I woke up in pain twice the last two nights and was up for half an hour each time. The bouts leave me exhausted and the middle of the night interruptions leave me sleep deprived.

I woke up late and by the time I was awake enough to do my morning stretches, another round of pain struck, sucking up all of my morning prep time. I spent my stretches time writhing in pain and panting in the already heavy heat of the day. I didn’t get a shower, coffee, or even have time to wash my face. I just pulled on clothes and loaded myself into my car (still entering from the passenger side and climbing over the stick shift because I can’t afford to fix the broken driver’s side door). When I got to Jen’s I realized that I had forgotten my Bert’s Bees Wax chapstick and my lips were already dry.

I could see that it might be the start of a no good, very bad day. But, I didn’t want to curse myself, so I focused on the idea of a happy day instead.

I was met at the door by loud barking dogs. Not unusual, but they do tend to be less energetically vocal first thing in the morning, so the barrage was an unpleasant morning bonus. The kitchen looked about usual—all the cupboards and drawers in various stages of openness and all of the counters in various stages of dishes and food prep. The floor, however, was in the unusual state of looking somewhat like the barn floor. There had clearly been a mishap in feeding the guinea pigs their hay.

It certainly looked like a no good, very bad day in the making….

I rolled up my sleeves (metaphorically, as I wore a tank top today) and got started. I thought that some good, hard housework might distract me from pain and crankiness. Air conditioning would help too. It was only 9am and the house was stuffy and hot. Since the air conditioning was already on, I just had to close all of the doors and windows. (Closing the doors is easy; keeping them closed is a huge challenge, what with all the two-year olds and ADD!) After 45 minutes of hot sweaty dish washing and counter scrubbing, I realized that the air conditioner was NOT broken, it was just set at 85 degrees. I turned it down to 78 and things got much more comfortable. The hot dishwashing and counter cleaning and floor sweeping continued and I started making some real progress.

Perhaps it wasn’t going to be such a bad day afterall….

But there was a pretty serious lack of food. I could make eggs, but there was no bread for toast. I could make beans but that takes hours. I could make cornbread but that takes an hour or so and it takes a clean kitchen (for my own OCD comfort, not because you really need a tidy kitchen to make cornbread). The kids were saying they were hungry and all I could offer was dried fruit. Desi woke up hungry and I had no idea what to feed her. Jen got out the last of the granola and said to just put milk in it (the yogurt was all gone).

At the same time, lots of other commotion was streaming around me. Jen’s boyfriend Krishnan was running around doing bits and pieces of projects while determined to be cheerful and conversational. I just wanted him to shut up and leave me alone (did I say I was cranky?). Jen’s son Elias (newly turned 18) had texted me to bring him some unscented lotion for his tattoo, which I did. When I gave him the lotion, he showed me his tattoo. I told him that I would have been more impressed if he had gotten on the bus to go work for Jen’s friend for a week. He wrinkled his nose and said he wasn’t interested in doing that. Walking away, I said—to no one in particular—that I would have been more impressed if he had been interested in going to work for Jen’s friend.

On the kid front, it was a whiny, crying, screaming day. Mostly they did not all cry or scream at once, but someone was crying or screaming pretty much non-stop all day. One of the two year olds is teething; the three year old was feeling especially sensitive and cried at the drop of a hat; one of the four year olds has been determined to stay sad and homesick non-stop all day including lots of crying, and the other was delivered in full attachment disorder melt down—I had to sit and hold her in a mommy huddle on the back porch until she was able to make the transition. Fortunately there were two older girls who helped out some with the little ones, but they also wanted to chat my ear off about cell phones and pop music and all I really wanted was them to shut up and go away (again, cranky!).

And then Jen told me she was leaving me alone with Elias while she went grocery shopping—words to strike terror into my heart since there is no guarantee when she will return once she leaves the house. However, she assured me that she had to have the car back by 11:30 to have her brakes fixed, so I would only have to hold down the fort alone for a limited time—an hour and a half, max. The mommy huddle happened while Jen was gone and Elias did a good job of holding down the fort while I was on the back porch. He did, however, disappear back into his room as soon as he helped his mom unload the groceries.

The worst part of the day was Jen’s scatteredness. Or perhaps it was just my cranky, pain-colored perception that made her seem scattered. It seemed to me that she was coming and going all day long, and that when she was in, she wasn’t really there, if you know what I mean. I thought when she came back from grocery shopping that I would feel less alone. Instead, her coming and going and not-being-thereness left me feeling more alone than if she had actually been out doing errands. Like when one of the older girls dropped the glass bottle of water in the middle of lunch and Jen launched in to clean-up mode, but then suddenly disappeared, leaving me to think the job was done, only to find more glass on the floor (which I cleaned up). (This was after the kids asked for more of everything non-stop, over and over again for a steady 15 minutes and I told Jen I was ready to quit. I know she was trying to fix it…) Or, like when I took one of the two-year olds in for a nap only to have him show back up in the pool area with Jen’s daughter Desi (6), a mouth full of chips, and a story from Desi that Jen had fed them and sent them out. When I went into the air-conditioned house (out of the 100 degree heat), Jen was sitting on the couch chatting with a parent and apologized for letting him escape from her.

Was this a no good, very bad day, or did I just have a bad attitude?

My worst moment was when I lost it with Desi. She had an attitude all day—sassy, belligerent, dare I say bitchy? Jen explained that she hadn’t gotten to bed until after eleven because her and Krishnan had had scheduling difficulties in picking up her horse Zena, and therefore Desi did not get enough sleep. I had words with Desi more than once about her behavior towards me, but it didn’t even make a dent. While cleaning up the rest of the glass, the kids at the table were asking for lunch service, Jen was talking to her car mechanic, Andy, and his daughters at the kitchen entrance, and Desi kept asking for more celery. I told her she would have to wait until I finished cleaning up the glass, so she walked off in a huff.

Five minutes after I finished, Jen was still talking to Andy, so in a bid for Jen’s attention Desi waltzed past Jen into the kitchen and announced she wanted more lunch after all. I told her no and asked her to leave the kitchen. She said no. I flicked water at her (I was doing another round of dishes) and when she didn’t budge, I held a dirty plate over her head and told her I would dump food on her head if she didn’t vacate the kitchen. She retreated to the kitchen gate and then yelled that I was mean and then stepped back into the kitchen. When I told her that she could go play or go to her room, she said no again and struck one of those “fuck you” poses she is so good at. I threw the water from my hands directly into her face, but she just came at me saying no. So I scooped her up, took her back to her room, and dropped her on her bed. When she hit, she flailed herself until she fell off the bed onto her head. I just closed the door and walked away. Sometimes you just gotta walk away.

It was pretty much a no good, very bad day.

At 3:15 I remembered that I had to ask Jen if I could get off early for a 4pm church event that I was in charge of. I asked Jen what she thought my chances were of getting off at four. She said three kids were being picked up very soon and that she thought I could go after that. Sure enough, those kids did go, but then the prospective parents who said they would come look at the daycare at 3 showed up at 3:45 and there is no way Jen can show the place without someone minding Desi, so I was there until 4:30 afterall. As I was leaving, one of the infants showed up, but Jen said she could handle it, so I went to my church thing. Only the tech set-up guy had shown up, so that was a wash. We did learn about live streaming capabilities at church though so that was good.

I got home and vented to my house-mate Michael. He told me that his house guests were picking up take out food and he thought there would be enough for me. There wasn’t though, which fit with the day, so I walked down to La Hacienda, had my favorite tostada and a couple of margaritas.

It was a no good, very bad day, but it seems to be ending well:)

Wondering where the Zen twist is? Either the margaritas or that I didn’t kill anyone. Take your pick!

Teamwork

2011-06-03T08:55:00.000-07:00

During my evaluation this past week, the board asked me what teamwork meant to me. I answered by giving some examples, which was adequate for the setting, but lacked depth. Then I went home and read more of the book Calling The Circle by Christina Baldwin, and there was a fuller, more intimate account of teamwork: teamwork is everyone giving over a piece of their autonomy to the center and the center is a combination of shared selves and a larger something that enables the group to be more than the sum of its parts. It is this center that everyone is working for and is accountable to. This is where true teamwork is rooted.

To do teamwork, we first and foremost need trust.

First, we have to trust ourselves. We need to have a clear view and acceptance of both our strengths and weaknesses. We need to be able to both praise and acknowledge our skills and talents, but also be able to accept our shortcomings with compassionate understanding. This requires a high level of self-awareness—an attribute not highly valued and, thus, mostly not taught (or learned), in our society. Instead, our culture encourages the extremes of self-effacement and blaming others which leads to a distorted self-view.

Second, we need to trust our teammates. We have to commit to bringing our whole selves to the service of the team. This means bringing the power and gifts of our strengths, and it also means being open and honest about our areas of weakness, enabling the groups shared strengths to make us all stronger, better, and more than we could ever be alone. This means we have to be brave, as we are vulnerable when we make ourselves fully seen. In this society—which believes that if there is a winner then there has to be a loser, and which uses fear as a tool of dominance and division—bringing your full self to the table takes great courage and a strength born of deep convictions.

Third, we need to trust in the process, which means believing that working together is the best way of moving us forward and obtaining our goals. Blocks to the teamwork process include harboring hidden agendas; believing that someone must lose; believing that others are looking to gain at our expense; being critical of others; holding on to pre-set outcomes; and clinging to expectations. When we let go of these blocks and we come together open to the creative possibilities that arise within a gathering of equals, then a synergistic magic can happen. I have seen amazing solutions arise out of such gatherings, solutions that are able to take deep root because they were created together and therefore are holistic.

In this society, we all come to teamwork wounded. We all come with expectations and judgments and fears. We will bring these with us into the circle of teamwork. If we can be honest with ourselves, brave enough to dare vulnerability together, and have faith in the process, amazing things can happen, even with all of our dominant culture baggage.

How Divide and Conquer Keep Winning...

2011-05-24T00:21:00.001-07:00

...And what you can do to stop it

There has been a lot in the news lately about how much rich corporations make and how little they pay in taxes. The polls show that the majority favor closing those tax loopholes, and yet the elected officials just voted to keep those loopholes. How can this be? There are way more of us than there are of them! The key here is divide and conquer. While corporate lobbyists stay on target, we get bogged down in division over everything from class to what TV shows we watch. It is NPR listeners versus Monster Truck Rally attendees; working class ghetto culture versus suburban elitists; and Techno-pop versus Country.

There are a lot more of us than them, but we are also much more diverse—they use our diversity against us. Without a unifying set of values to make us cohesive, we turn into a thousand bickering subsets. And while we are kept busy being divided, the mega-rich conquer and run the world.

It doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, I see many signs that things are shifting, and in this I find hope. There is much that we can all do to help move this shift forward. First, we have to become Aware. Without Awareness, nothing can change, because without Awareness, we don’t even know that a problem exists. So, let’s start with Awareness that divide and conquer is being effectively used.

The tools of divide and conquer:

Divided communication. Talk separately to people who have a shared concern (say, the environment). Start with the people who have the most power first, and use a mix of carefully selected events, facts, half-truths, and lies to show them how one or more others in the same group are actually working against them and their values. Keep the communications shrouded in secrecy, but not actually secret—you want others to know that you are talking, but not the details. It is important to keep everyone guessing and walking on eggshells.

Fear as a motivator. Make sure that you make it clear that people’s values are not just threatened, but are in immediate jeopardy. The more specific you can make the threat, the better. You also want to get people into a reactive mode—trigger their anxiety so you can keep them hunkered down and protecting their own job, project, title, etc.

Misdirection. Once misinformation seeds have been planted, keep people pointed away from you and towards the others in the group. You aren’t to blame, you just pointed out the potential disaster—so keep redirecting people to those you have pointed out as being to blame. Because no one is perfect, this works great—you can always find errors and mistakes that can serve as “evidence” of wrongdoing, unworthiness, or underhandedness.

Break trust. The scapegoating that arises out of misdirection and fingerpointing decreases communication and increases fear. No one knows who is talking to whom, or what about, so communications become even more fractured and perhaps stop altogether. Fear triggers a mass-attack of self-defensiveness, which also plays into the fractured or stopped communications; afterall, what I say might be used against me. When people act out of fear, they often say and do things that they don’t mean, and make mistakes they wouldn’t otherwise make. The more the fear increases, the worse this becomes, and out of these broken communications and actions, trust is broken. This is especially true for areas where trust never had a chance to develop in the first place.

End result: Division makes working together cohesively impossible and whatever the group’s concern had been (say, the environment) suffers set-backs at best and major defeats at worst.

Pretty depressing, huh?

Well, it doesn’t have to be this way. Here is an alternative strategy—Unify and Grow:

Holistic communication. Holistic communication is clear, honest, and compassionate communication with self, and with others. There are lots of tools to help us here.

Starting with self communication, Byron Katy’s questions work is an excellent tool: “Is it true? Can I really know it is true?” It is difficult to get derailed by incomplete or inaccurate information when we ask these questions. We either have facts proving truth, or we don’t have the truth—and then we can choose to ask questions to get to the truth. For example, it is easy to make assumptions about someone’s actions. If a person answers the phone and then slams it down without answering us, we can assume that person is rude, angry, mean, etc. But, can we really know this is the truth? No. The only way to know the truth behind that action is to ask the person who answered the phone. It could be that their child just slammed their finger in the door and they had to run for help.

Katy has two final questions: “How does believing that it is true make me think, feel, or act? And, How would I think, feel or act if I did not believe that it is true?” Katy’s questions are deep and worthy tools for holistic communication. I would add these questions or areas of exploration when reviewing a specific action/event: What are the facts that you do know; in other words, what did you, yourself, see, hear, smell, taste, or feel? How do you feel about the action/event? What does that action/event mean to you? What do you want? What do you need?

Taking our insights to the next step, communication has to be unifying. This means that we must talk to the person or people involved directly. If there is a group involved in a particular event or issue, than the whole group needs to make an effort to get together and talk things through. This communication needs to be clear, honest, and compassionate.

Hope as a motivator. Communication with self and with others needs to be rooted in compassion. We non-verbally communicate trust, dislike, empathy, frustration, etc. when we are interacting with someone. If we assume the other person is acting out of greed or malice, then we will communicate this and our thinking will close down avenues of discussion. When we assume the other person is acting with good intensions, then we can listen with compassion and avenues of communication will be opened up. Starting with the assumption of good intentions is acting out of hope. It could be that our hope will not be fulfilled. It may be that the other person is, indeed, acting out of greed or malice. Listening with compassion enables us to live our values even with those who would hurt us (it could be argued that greedy, malicious people need our compassion even more), and avoids shutting down communication and fomenting negative feelings with those who otherwise would have worked with us.

Collective responsibility and problem solving. When everyone acknowledges and honors their responsibilities, including their responsibility for errors and mistakes, then we can all move forward together to effectively problem solve. This accepting of responsibility has to be realistic and balanced—we can only take responsibility for the things we have power over (either given or inherent). Please note: This stage cannot be reached without holistic communication. A lack of facts, assumptions, and strong feelings can all undermine or derail this process of owning up to responsibilities and problem solving.

Build trust. Holistic communication based on compassion; using hope as a motivator; and working together to identify responsibility and do problem solving all build trust. Trust is unifying, not divisive. It is also a lot of hard work, which is why division seems so much more effective—it is fast and easy, so it is ubiquitous. The Unify and Grow strategy is slower and harder, and it is also deeper and more resilient.

Every time you see symptoms of separate communication, fear, misdirection, and broken trust, you might want to ask yourself what is really going on. You might want to ask if holistic communication might be in order, if hope might be better applied, if collective responsibility and problem solving might be a better path to building trust and unity. You might want to ask who stands to gain if we fall apart? And, who stands to gain if we pull together? What might we be willing to risk for unity? Might we be willing to risk asking more questions? Might we be willing to risk assuming good intensions? Might we be willing to risk hoping for something better, and do the work needed to build trust?

I am not offering any quick fixes here. What I am offering is good, honest, hardwork, and the chance to grow a better future together.

The Psychology of Magic

2011-02-01T21:32:00.000-08:00

We live at a time when the economy, energy and the environment are all giving us clear reminders that we live on a finite planet, with finite resources. Our economy is based on a model of continuous growth which is clearly unsustainable—just think of a cancer cell. Our energy is overwhelmingly based on petroleum which is a non-renewable energy source that is nearing if not surpassing peak production. And our environment is showing great signs of stress and injury as we pursue both endless economic growth and oil energy.

Change is upon us. Whether we like it or not, we will have to live with the physical consequences that our current system has created. We can continue with the status quo—denying anything is wrong and continuing to live resource intensively. Or we can start the work of transforming our society into an integrated, holistic, sustainable whole. I believe this is the challenge of our time.

And I believe that magic—in the pagan, witchcraft sense—has much to offer for helping us achieve this transformation. Because the principles of magic are rooted in psychology and are in tune with the findings of neuroscience and physics, they can provide valuable tools for both the inner transformation and community transformation needed to successfully transition to a healthier world.

Much of my understanding of Magic and Witchcraft comes from the writings of Starhawk, and from her book The Spiral Dance in particular. When I first read this book I was surprised. I had read many spirituality books, and all of them had some great little nuggets of wisdom or information, but all of them also had parts that I could not agree with. Starhawk’s book was different. In reading a book on magic, I had expected to hear arguments about why I should believe in the Goddess and Magic, but instead she presents the idea of manifest deity:

“People often ask me if I believe in the Goddess. I reply, “Do you believe in rocks?”… In the Craft we do not believe in the Goddess—we connect with Her; through the moon, the stars, the ocean, the earth, through trees, animals, through other human beings, through ourselves. She is here. She is within us all. She is the full circle: earth, air, fire, water, and essence—body, mind, spirit, emotions, change” (91-92).

Basically, she is saying that the word “Goddess” is just a short cut way of describing everything that we can see and touch and feel and hear. I may not be comfortable with the specific words used, but this concept fit with both my spiritual sensibilities and with my scientific mind.

I had also expected to be told what to do and how to do it. Instead, Starhawk presents suggestions for rituals and spells, but specifically says that what is really important is finding what works for me. In talking about the tools of Magic, Starhawk says, “The mind works magic, and no elaborately forged knife or elegant wand can do any more than augment the power of a trained mind. The tools are simply aids in communicating with Younger Self, who responds much better to tangibles than to abstracts” (75).

Which leads me to where Magic and Psychology intersect. Starhawk says, “Learning to work magic is a process of neurological repatterning, of changing the way we use our brains…” (123). This fits in exactly with information from the different fields of brain research. I love reading about brains. It is fascinating to learn how the different parts of the brain work, the role that biochemistry plays, and how the environment impacts our brains.

One of my favorite brain books is My Stroke of Insight by neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor. This book describes her experience of having a stroke and how she fully recovered. Because of her work as a neuroanatomist, she knew the exact science of what was happening in her brain as the stroke was occurring. However, the actual experience gave her huge insights into how our brains really function and just what they are capable of.

Jill’s stroke was in the left hemisphere, which is the half of the brain responsible for linear, logical, linguistic thinking. The right side of our brains is nonlinear, holistic and visuo-spatially oriented. On the morning of the stroke, Jill’s left brain stopped and started working over and over again. When it was working, she knew that she was having a stroke, and knew that she needed help. When her left brain shut down, she could no longer track her experience or make a plan. Because of this, it took her several hours to successfully call for help.

Jill says, “I remember that first day of the stroke with terrific bitter-sweetness. In the absence of the normal functioning of my left orientation association area, my perception of my physical boundaries was no longer limited to where my skin met air. I felt like a genie liberated from its bottle. The energy of my spirit seemed to flow like a great whale gliding through a sea of silent euphoria” (67).

With her left brain silenced, Jill was able to experience a oneness with the universe, a sense of detachment to the things of the ego, and an all encompassing peace and compassion. One of the main points in her book is that, in this society, we spend too much time in our left brain, and not enough time in our right, and that the world would be a much more peaceful place if we balanced this out.

This fits with what Starhawk says about magic. She says that rituals and spell casting are just ways of tapping into and evoking our right brain—the part she calls “Younger Self.” She says that we put on flowing capes and light candles and dance to drum music not because there is something inherently magical about those things, but because our right brain responds to play and fun and pleasure. This is why she says that you have to find rituals and tools that work for you—what is play for me might not be play for you. My right brain may respond well to moonlight dancing, while yours might respond best to biking through the park. Because our right brains are holistic, the best way to tap into them is by tapping into our senses—what we see, hear, taste, touch and smell.

Which brings us back to manifest deity—Goddess, God, the Great Mystery—is all found in things that we directly experience. It is not found in logical, left brain abstractions, but in our right brain experience of wholeness and interconnection. I believe that it is a balance between these two halves of our brain that enables us to be fully human.

I want to talk a little about physics now. I have little formal education in the hard sciences, but I greatly enjoy reading about the different hard science fields. I have been told that there is no way to give a truly precise explanation of physics without mathematics. Most of us don’t speak mathematics, so we have to settle for the less precise explanations found in words. So here is what I understand of quantum mechanics: All things are made up of both matter and energy. Energy is always moving, and is not contained by matter. I like the explanation that mathematical cosmologist Brian Swimme gives in his book The Universe is a Green Dragon. In this book he translates his knowledge of cosmology and physics into a poetically accessible story. Here is how he explains this concept:

“When you look at the moon, you are absorbing the moon just as the ocean absorbs minerals.

In terms of quantum mechanics, you as an individual body are represented by a particular quantum state. This includes the interactions of all the elementary particles of your body. Now imagine a patterned wave of light flowing into you. Some of the photons of this light wave interact with your own elementary particles, and through this interaction your quantum state is changed… Your particles are new in the sense that they have absorbed something from the photons and entered a new state of being.

This means that when you stand in the presence of the moon, you become a new creation. The photon’s interactions have entered into the quantum state of your entire ensemble and you are, through these interactions, a moon-person… The elementary particles of your body have absorbed an influence and in that sense they—and you—are brand, spanking new, a human being resonating everywhere with moonlight.”

Research on the transfer of energy between humans—which is a given in quantum physics—is still relatively new, but it fits with the experiences most of us have had in our own lives. Haven’t you ever been around someone who drained your energy? Or haven’t you felt disproportionately energized after being around a particularly optomistic friend? The work of Jan Fowler and Nicholas Christakis of Harvard University in 2008 reveals that happiness might be contagious. This aspect of physics—that we are constantly interchanging energy with the world around us—supports the idea that we can affect the world beyond our own skin by affecting the energy flowing through us and between us.

Which brings me back to Magic. One of the definitions of magic is “the art of changing consciousness at will.” Starhawk says, “Magic requires first the development and then the integration of right-hemisphere, spatial, intuitive, holistic, patterning awareness. It opens the gates between the unconscious and the conscious minds.”

In other words, you cast a spell to align your mind, body and spirit with your will, and through your will, you work to obtain what you desire. So, if you need a job, you cast a spell for a job in order to align your mind, body and spirit with the idea of a manifesting a new job. And then you go out and do some serious job hunting—search the want ads, fill out applications, send in resumes and so on. Magic in our world is not the instant gratification Harry Potter magic. It is not enough to wish that something were so—you have to do both inner work and outer work.

Why not skip the spell and just do the job hunting? There is scientific research that shows that doing both increases your chances of being successful. For example, in 2010, one of the scientific projects reported in the publication The Week showed that people who had a lucky charm and who believed in that lucky charm set higher goals and felt more confident.

You can say that this is the placebo affect, but I think the placebo affect proves just how incredibly powerful our minds are. Think about it—you take a sugar pill and, by the power of your mind alone, you make yourself heal. That’s pretty powerful. Witchcraft believes in the power of our minds and works to harness that power to our benefit and the benefit of our world.

This is why I say that Magic has much to offer us in the challenges we face today—with our economy, energy, and environment all showing signs of crashing up against the realities of physical limitations—we need to develop a clear and strong vision of a healthier, happier, sustainable world. And then we need to engage our senses, tap into Younger Self with pleasure and play in order to harness our own inner energies and align our wills with our vision in order to manifest that vision.

Blessed Be.

To Be Clean Again

2010-09-08T10:25:00.000-07:00

The view out the airplane window
like a mirror of my mind
brownish grey
everywhere a diffuse heavy haze
smudged thick in patches
more stew than iced tea
And the ridges
snaked convolutions
snowtopped peaks
shine bright white,
valleys layered with old snow lying
like nicotine stained fingers
shriveled on the edges

We need a good long scrubbing
Followed by a thorough dowsing
An invigorating downpour of water
Rainforest fresh or
Newly released from glacial depths
A cleansing to wash away the
Accumulated ooze and grime . . .
To emerge clean, pure, renewed
Dare I say--reborn?

But the purest rainforest
fall and glacial melts are
tainted too
There will be no simplistic
one-time cleansing
no easy fix-it-all deluge
no purification by proxy . . .
The scrubbing will be long and hard

I look out the window as we slowly
descend

I wrote this poem at the end of the century. It came back to me today as I was thinking about my weekend in the deep woods, trouble at work, financial insecurity, and running behind on too many promised projects. I stood in the shower under a deluge of hot water and thought about how fiercely positive I was two weeks ago when I wrote my Cost of Living blog. I wanted to follow that blog up with tools of hope—and here I am, feeling brownish grey and shriveled on the edges. How can I preach hope when I feel so hopeless?

Perhaps I need to spend some time talking about hopelessness before I can get back to hope. After all, one of the problems with this society is our tendency to think that if we can just get to that one, magical spot, then everything will work out and we will live happily ever after; if we just get to a place of hope, it will stay bright and shiny in our hearts forevermore. The truth is that everything ebbs and flows, including hope. The trick is not to keep hope glowing non-stop—the trick is making it through the dark until the next tide comes in.

I was in the woods this weekend. Specifically I was in the Mendocino Woodlands State Park at a camp in the middle of 700 acres of redwoods, next to a thin rocky creek, at the bottom of a long, dusty mountain road (http://mendocinowoodlands.org/home.html). There have been Unitarian Universalists camp gatherings held there for at least 30 years. This was my first time and there are many stories I could share, but that is for another time. What I brought back with me that I want to share here is the dark depths of the forest. Even at high noon, the sun merely filtered faintly down to dimly light the soft needle paths, the floor of ferns and rocky outcroppings stretching steeply up on either side, hemming me in with rock and thick soil, and trees as tall as city buildings. The silence was profound and left my ears ringing with the void until they adjusted. Then I could hear…..something. The soft hum of life, barely on the edges of my awareness. I sat in a small patch of sunlight on a moss covered log and listened to the almost-silence, and let the forest seep into my soul.

We were surrounded by young redwoods—young, by redwood standards since the area had been clearcut in the 1930’s. The remains of ancient, old redwoods were everywhere—burned out trunks as large SUVs still standing as living reminders of some long ago fire. Redwoods can keep growing even when their cores get burned out. These stumps were not stumps because fire killed them—they were stumps because humans cut them down. Even so, some survived. Redwoods send out roots that grow up into new trees. The new trees are exactly the same as the old trees genetically, so you can say that these trees are thousands of years old, although only the youngest growths are still viable. There is a critical difference, however. The new trees are growing in a different environment, one that encourages fast growth. Because of this, the new redwoods are soft. Old redwoods can be almost as hard as steel—difficult to cut and very sturdy. While we still have redwood forests, we will never again see trees of steel. That environment is gone, forevermore.

We have done so much damage to this planet. We have lost so many species, polluted so much of our water and air, lost so many forests. And we have built such amazing things—telescopes that can see far out into space, spaceships that have shown us the moon, seacraft that have allowed us glimpses of the ocean depths. We have looked inside the human genome and found amazing complexity, and miraculous cures. The yin and the yang—creation and destruction. There must be balance. It is a rule of nature, a rule of physics, a truth that all religions have recognized even if they have not always practiced it.

This brings me back to my poem—to be clean again. Isn’t this what we all yearn for—a return to balance? Aren’t we all just exhausted by the constant, niggling fears? By the never-ending, low-level insecurity that runs through all of our lives? Don’t we all feel grungy and dusty from slogging through all of the day-to-day grime of life? Doesn’t a deluge of pure, clean water sound fantastic and refreshing? Oh, to be clean again!

And so I came home from the woods, filled up with their deep silence, and I realize how incredibly thirsty I am for change—and just how far away that change is. The reality is that change takes lots of hard work. Lasting change means doing lots of mundane, every day cleaning—rolling up our sleeves and scrubbing out those sinks, cleaning up the toilets, and washing down the walls. Change means that sometimes we will inherit difficult things to deal with: losing a job, going bankrupt, racking up medical debt, feeling overwhelmed, dropping into depression, losing faith. Sometimes hope is just too hard to reach for. Sometimes it is all we can do just to keep breathing. And that is OK. Sit with the deafening silence, sit still and breathe. Wait until our ears adjust and we can once again hear the faint flow of life that is busy living all around us.

InPeace, Nikki

Cost of Living

2010-08-25T11:53:00.000-07:00

For most of the past year, I have worked as the Administrative Director for the Butte Environmental Council. I inherited an administrative mess, a financial tangle, and an almost non-existent development program. Working on part-time hours, with the assistance of amazing co-workers, consultants and interns; a supportive board; a patient and generous membership; and committed regular volunteers—we have succeeded in stabilizing the organization. We have survived, although just barely. We have not—yet—been able to thrive. Even with all of the hard work I have done on the BEC budget and finances, we are still struggling financially.

In looking at my own, personal finances, the struggle is repeated. As a part-time employee, I make $1720 a month, gross, from my BEC work. This works out to about $1290 net per month. Of this, 20% of my gross income goes to pay for my student loans. However, looking at gross income is not a very accurate picture of reality, since I can’t pay bills with gross pay—it’s the net pay that counts. So, actually, my student loan payment is closer to 28% of my monthly income. That leaves me $960 a month to pay for rent, utilities, gas, and food each month. This doesn’t count things like car insurance, car repairs, credit card debt (which, yes, I have), or my out-of-pocket medical expenses since my part-time job does not come with health insurance. Even with all of the hard work I have done, I am still struggling financially.

This is not a unique story. I hear this every where I go: church, friends, other organizations, family members all talk about how tight money is, or how hard it is to find work, or having to take on extra work just to make ends meet. Nonprofits are cutting back, letting employees go to save the larger whole, or they are failing and throwing everyone into the unemployment lines. Heck, even my bank failed last week!

And yet, I do not want to focus on the negatives. All of the struggle sets the stage we are on, but it does not write the play. We still get to choose what we do with the money that we do have. We still get to choose what we do with our lives both in work and at home. We can freeze up in fear, close up and shut down; or we can open up to the amazing opportunities that can be found within and together in community. We can reach deep inside and find reservoirs of generosity and passion that we never knew existed. We can reach out to find others who can make us stronger, smarter, more energized. We can live our lives out of a place of hope and love.

This is why, even with my own little financial drama, I still find ways to give money to BEC every month as a BEC Angel. It is why I continue to attend fundraisers for local nonprofits doing great work. It is why I take the time to have breakfast with a friend, or go for a walk with my mom, or drive four hours to see my sister in Oregon. Keeping the flow going is what feeds the hope, and hope is what keeps us moving forward, growing, changing, making things better.

I am not saying don’t ever despair, don’t ever worry or fear. I often wake up at four in the morning worrying about BEC’s finances and my anxiety can keep me from falling back to sleep. There is a place for worry and fear and even despair. Those black depths are a part of the human experience and denying them only drives them underground.

What I am saying is that we need to work harder at actively cultivating hope and love and passion. Fears are a dime a dozen. They are cheap and easy, and fear is too often our default in this society. We need hope, and we need to do the work that grows hope. We need to work at growing creativity and thoughtfulness. We need to support people and organizations and experiences that will move us out of the either/or status quo of materialism and into something brighter, healthier, cleaner. We do that with our time, with our talent, and with our money. We do it within our selves, and we do it together, in community.

Financially speaking, I would do much better getting out of the nonprofit sector. A better paying job would make my expensive graduate education worth the cost, as well as better enable me to pay for it. However, the cost of living is much more than the bills we pay or the debts we owe. The cost of living is in the courage and perseverance it takes to work for something better, because working for something better is not easy. It is hard work. It is also good, rewarding, hopeful work.

InPeace & Hope, Nikki Schlaishunt

Dreaming Deeper

2010-01-19T17:56:00.000-08:00

My dreams seem so much smaller now. When I was a child I used to dream about making best friends with a wild horse. Together we would explore the world and have great adventures. When I was a little older I dreamed about having super powers. Together with my team of fellow super heroes, we would do great deeds, stopping bad guys and saving damsels in distress. Then I learned a little something about politics and how the world really runs, and I dreamed of growing up to be President or a Senator. I imagined I would have a strong partner by my side and together we would strike down injustice, right wrongs, and save the world—the dynamic duo!

In high school I got a little lost. For a while I had that partner, that special someone who saw injustice as I did and was as committed as I was to doing what it takes to right wrongs. But I wasn’t able to see a future for us because there were no models for what we had. What super hero was gay? What Senator? This was before Ellen, before Will and Grace. I had no idea how to fit ‘gay’ into my dynamic duo dream, so I bounced around aimlessly for a while, feeling all alone in the world.

When I met Scott, I thought that I had found a perfect match—he was practical where I was starry-eyed. This wasn’t a pie-in-the-sky, tilting at windmills batch of dreams. This was regular, ordinary, doable dreams: marriage, children, a house, a dog. It wouldn’t matter what I did for a career—anything would do because the root would be the family we would create. It was a good idea, and—while it lasted—it was a good dream. What we found out was I needed extra-ordinary dreams, and Scott did not.

Enter Brad. A social justice warrior, living on the fringes of society, working in the trenches, righting wrongs by day and playing music and talking politics with friends by night. I think we were both surprised by the intensity of our first meeting, a sense of recognition, of fitting together perfectly. Except for my having a husband, of course. So we went along for a long time, trying to be just friends, ignoring the elephant in the room that our meshing was so much more…

Together, we have been through many challenges. Mostly those challenges have been how to pay the bills and put food on the table—subsistence challenges. Not the sort of world-changing work I had hoped for, but life is often like that. Even so, we have persevered. We had dreams of moving to California, of getting jobs that would make a difference in the world, of having a home of our own, and friends, and community. Years later, we are here. We live in California and we both have non-profit jobs that pay enough that our dream of having a home of our own is actually within reach.

So, why don’t’ I feel better? I think I have learned to settle for less. I have learned to reach only for the easy dreams, the exciting start of the journey, the outside packaging, instead of going deeper. Instead of spending evenings mixing creativity and politics and community building, I watch murder mysteries on TV and make pithy postings on Facebook. Instead of saving the world with my partner by my side, we work on our laptops, alone in the same room. Instead of reaching for those starry dreams of a shared housing community, I have dreams of a single home with a single family. Anything else is too exhausting. This is middle age, huh? Too tired to dream anymore.

And that pisses me off. Just because I am in my forties, I can no longer dream of magic and saving the world? Just because my heart has been broken time and time again, I am going to give up and settle for less? Just because I fear losing my home, my partner, my income, I am willing to trade in dreams of a better world for a make-do world? I don’t know that I like this person that I have become. This person with the small, practical dreams. Like The Waitresses say, “I want magic in my real world!”

Maybe I do not have the fiery energy of youth any more, but that cannot stop me from reaching for the stars, for dreaming the impossible and working to make it real.

I’ll just have to pace myself and take more naps!

News From Nikkiland 2009

2010-01-08T16:09:00.000-08:00

Famine & Feast
It has been a year of Famine and Feast. We started out the year not able to make ends meet. Brad was still unemployed and I had two jobs that just didn't pay enough to cover our bills. Without the support of family, friends and strangers (w received two annonymous $300 checks in March) we would have ended up homelss. While mom and Dan would have given us shelter, we stil lwould have lost our apartment and faced bankruptcy.

In May, Brad was hired as the Executive Director of the Torres Community Shelter (irony? serendipity?). Compared to jobs in the private sector his salary is tiny. Compared to the financial dire straights of our spring, his salary is great riches! My work situation has, likewise, improved. In Arpil I started working as a grant wirting assistant for Tempra (that's her name) which was better hours and money. Then in July I started working again for the Butte Environmental Council (BEC) in a leadership role this time. On the sad side, this meant leaving my daycare work; on the happy side, this meant almost double the money. Again, small by comparison to the private sector, and huge compared with our great lack just months before.

Career
Early Childhood Education (ECE): This past spring was heavy on ECE advocacy and learning for me. Jen and I went to two different ECE conferences, and took several different classes, most of them having to do with growing brains. [For more on this subject, see my February 13 and March 20, 2009 postings.] Sadly, I left this field in July. I greatly miss the children, the mini-farm, and working with Jen.

Grant Writing Assistant: In April I started working for Tempra as her grant writing assistant. I have learned a ton about writing grants and other development work from her, and yet there is still much more to learn. I enjoy the work, even though some of it is tedious, and I greatly enjoy working with Tempra.

Butte Environmental Council (BEC): I was asked by the Board to return to BEC to help with the transition and to provide the leadership they knew they needed. We have done a ton of work, and still more remains! The Board fired the Executive Director the end of June, and that case is stil not settled. Since then I have waded through records and finaces and contracts, and I can tell you that we have inherited a very challenging set of difficulties that will take at least another six months to work through. BEC has been able to keep active with our advocacy and education work, but unless we can up the income, we will eventually have to cut hours or loss staff, which will mean we will have to decrease our efforts and, thus, our effectiveness. So, my work is cut out for me! Overall, it is challenging and rewarding work and has been a great learning experience.

Volunteer Work
UUFC: I started my second year on the Board at my church in July. We said good-bye to our interim minister in June and welcomed Sydney and Dennis, a retiring minister couple, as our new part-time ministers in August. They have been wonderful to work with! There have been some unique challenges on the board this year--working to solve our space issues, and getting our personnel policies into order.

Rogue Theatre: In July I handed over the treasurer position to Delisa and took over her secretary role. In June we had another Drag-e-okee event, and Brad sang dressed in drag (photos available for viewing on Facebook!). We also decided to add a formal season opening gala, which we are calling the Rogue Bacchinalia. In October we (well, mostly Betty) did a 24-hour Dance-A-Thon, which raised a good chunk of money and was lots of fun even though attendance was low. This year I also participated in the Fringe Festival, and wrote a ten minute play that was very well received.

Friends & Family
As most of you know, my Grandpa Leeth died in May. [See may 8 and May 15, 2009 postings for more details.]

In June, Brad's mom Joanne, daughter Sarah, two granddaughters Marisa and Breanna, son Austin, and his girlfriend Iris, all came to visit Chico for a week. We got a hotel room for Joanne, Srah and the girls, while Austin and Iris stayed in our living room. We had a great time showing them around Chico and the parks and just visiting.

In July I went to my second California World Music Fest. I drove up with Dan, stayed in my own tent in Jen's camp, and then drove back with Jen, Kiran and Elias. The music was awesome, as always; the weather was killing hot. I spent the entire afternoon at the inside venues, trying to cool down on the cement floors. Hopefuly next year will be less hot! Also in July, friends and family joined us at the Chico Outlaws baseball game where the Torres Shelter was the featured nonprofit. Brad threw out the opening pitch, and we all got the best seats--behind homeplate on a couple of couches out of the sun.

In August, my mom and I drove up and picked up Summer for a weekend away. We went to Klamath Falls, stopping at the Lake in the Woods on the way. It was a low key vacation, but very nice to just hang out together. Later that month our friends Tim and Joel came up to Chico for a side visit from the San Francisco vacation. After, they decided to move to SF. Joel is now in San Mateo waiting for Tim to fix up and sell his house so he can move too. I am very excited they will be so close!!!!!

In September, I wanted Brad to see Mendocino, so I booked us a campsite at McKerricher State Park. It is in a patch of woods next to the beach and is a lovely little place. It was, however, very cold and foggy the weekend we were there. We had a nice time visiting shops and galleries in Mendocino, hiking down the cliff to the beach, visiting glass beach in Fort Bragg, and walking the boardwalk at McKerricher.

In October, I returned to Mendocino with my family. My mom, sister Summer, and my Aunt Karen and her three grown daughters, Melanie, Debbie, and Michelle, all rented a house in Casper. It was beautiful with wonderful ocean cliff views, a hot tub in the back, and a wood stove. Summer was sick the whole time, which was disappointing. She was able to join us for some shopping and we also played games and talked and snacked by the wood stove. We all grew up together, so it was great to be able to spend some extended time together as adults. We all agreed to do it again next year!

Halloween: Our increased income made it possible for me to fly back to Milwaukee for my church ladies' annual Halloween gathering, and to catch up with my friend Kristin and her family. It was freezing that weekend, but being able to leisurely catch up with Kristin and spend time with Greg and their children Maya, Evan, and Adia made it worth it. At our Halloween gathering, we all wore our best witch outfits and we got to hand out candy to the trick-or-treating children. I also got to be there when the group gave Lori the stole we had commissioned for her. She graduated from seminary and we had wanted to do something special for her. It is an amzaing stole, and she was very touched. I also got to hear her preach, since she happened to be doing the sermon at Kristin's church the weekend I was there!

In November, Brad's dad, Jim, took a train out to visit us. He stayed with us for a week. Both of us had to work most of the time, but I was able to take him out to Bear Hole one day when I was free and Brad was not. Brad and I had Thanksgiving at Mom & Dan's. Most of Dan's family came up too. After dinner we both went by the Shelter to help out with the festivities there. There were plenty of people helping, so we didn't stay as long as we had thought we would need to.

In early December, Brad and I flew back to Milwaukee to celebrate Christmas with his family. We stayed with his mom and Aunt Di, and the day after we arrived Austin and Iris, Sarah and the girls, and Jim all came over to open gifts and drink the chocolate martinis that Joanne learned to make! We had a very nice day of celebration. We spent the week working remotely, visiting friends. and surviving the cold.

Famine & Feast Reprise
From When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron: "Fear is a universal experience. Even the smallest insect feels it. We wade in the tidal pools and put our finger near the soft, open bodies of sea anemones and they close u. Everything spontaneously does that. It's not a terrible thing that we feel fear when faced withthe unknown. It is part of being alive, something we all share. We react against the possiblity of loneliness, or death, or not having anything to hold on to. Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth."

It is a time of great change. Where once we walked secure on firm earth, we now find ourselves slipping on shifting sands--gritty, silty-slick. We are struggling to find a new balance, a way to negotiate this new terrain. We find ourselves facing the unknown, looking for a way back. There is no way back, there is only moving forward.

Fear is a natural reaction. But we don't have to make choices out of fear--closing up, separating. We can choose to make our choices out of hope, out of love, out of faith in ourselves and each other. We can choose to open up, to grow closer. This is the great gift of these uncertain times.

May you all be blessed with a great blossoming.

Of Babies and Bathwater

2009-07-22T09:41:00.000-07:00

At the BEC membership meeting last night, several people used the phrase “Don’t’ throw the baby out with the bathwater.” This morning I was reviewing all of the many stories and opinions shared and I realize that babies and bathwater is a very appropriate metaphor in this case. Afterall, isn’t it the recognition of water as a precious and limited resource that has us all so concerned about BEC and advocacy?

There seems to be an endless, renewable supply of water here in Northern California. Even in dry years it still rains and snows and the creeks and rivers don’t run dry. Well, mostly they don’t run dry. As a community we are slowly coming to realize that water is not limitless, and yet the majority still use sprinklers to water large lawns (and the sidewalks, more often than not), take long showers, wash our cars in our driveways, all without much thought to how we might better conserve this resource. Nor do the majority think about just how easily we might lose this easy, mostly free access to a valuable necessity. Without water, life is not possible.

Babies are pretty important too. They are the means by which we perpetuate the species and they are pretty darned cute. Although perhaps a little less cute after being up all night screaming. Still, we don’t throw them out when they scream because babies need us to care for them or they would not be able to survive. We can’t expect babies to feed themselves or pay the bills. It is not reasonable to expect babies to show respect and empathy for their parents’ need for sleep by limiting their crying to daylight hours only. However, we do expect babies to grow and learn.

Last night I heard seventeen years worth of talented, committed, passionate former board members, staff, and volunteers speak. The story was pretty much the same throughout those seventeen years: Each started out excited by the goal of protecting our environment and making BEC the best organization possible to achieve that end. Each person worked very hard at helping Barbara, and each found Barbara turning her formidable, aggressive advocacy skills on them. BEC has had seventeen years of repeatedly draining the organization of great workers and refilling with new great workers in what seems to be an endless cycle.

Water is a valuable and limited commodity. The consequences of our actions, of our thoughtless use of water as an endless, renewable resource, have led to the draining of all of California’s aquifers except for the one we all live above—the Tuscan Aquifer. Clean, plentiful water is an inextricable part of a healthy ecosystem, of which our human community and economy are an interconnected part. When one part is sick or abused, that sickness or abuse ripples out to affect the whole.

Human creations like organizations function in very much the same way. We are all part of the ecosystem—the office workers, board members, and star advocates alike. The system only functions well when the whole works together, each doing their part to create a larger, healthier whole. Both water and babies are important and neither should be discarded lightly. I think the current BEC board is no different than the many past BEC boards in valuing both, and I do not think they made this decision quickly or lightly.

The thing with bathwater and babies is that sometimes you need to change the bathwater, and sometimes the baby needs to grow up.

Grandfather

2009-05-17T00:12:00.000-07:00

My earliest memories of my mom’s dad are from when I was about four years old. Grandpa got up very early, cooked himself breakfast and then went off to work long before the rest of the house was up and about. Except for me. I loved getting up with him. He made the most delicious waffles, with real melted butter and maple syrup that he had sent to him from back in Michigan where he was from. I would sit at the big long dining room table with my plate full and watch him cook bacon on a grill thing that sat on the dining room table while he tended the waffle iron, which was also on the kitchen table.

I loved the smell of the bacon and the fresh perked coffee, although I didn’t have (or want) either of those. I knew that it was something of an interruption, having me there to tend to and serve, so I tried not to ask too many questions or talk too much. This was very difficult for me because even back then I was very loquacious (and filled with ‘satiable curiosity!). I am certain that sometimes I tried his patience. Still, there was something so special about those mornings that whenever I spent the night at my grandparents, I would go to sleep reminding myself to wake up early enough to have breakfast with grandpa, and I was so disappointed with myself when I woke up late and he was already gone….

In the High and Far-Off Times, my grandfather, O Best Beloved, was born Giles Garth Leeth in Clare Michigan, May 11, 1922. During one of our conversations last summer, he told me about his childhood summers on the farm, and how sad his grandmother was later after selling the farm and moving to town. He told me that one of his jobs on the farm was to go out and find the newborn calves because they would curl up in the pasture and make themselves very small and hard to find, but they had to be brought in where they could be kept safe. He told me that as soon as he learned to read he read everything he could get his hands on, including women’s magazines. In high school he won a city-wide spelling contest and the prize was a trip to the 1938 World Fair in New York City.

Grandfather was a navigator in the Army Air Corps in WWII. He graduated with a BS in engineering in 1949, and later went through a course of study in atomic energy before there was such a thing as a degree in nuclear engineering. He worked for G.E. and for Tempo (a research arm of G.E.) for 34 years, developing project plans for a variety of different areas, including propulsion and nuclear technology. Even in his last year of life he was tinkering around with different engineering inventions. He loved problem solving real-life issues and coming up with concrete engineering solutions.

He also loved to joke around. He told me lots of stories last summer about all the jokes he and his engineering buddies would play on each other at work. One I remember involved the creation of a very long sling shot which the engineers used to launch paper clips into the cubicle of the physicists at the other end of the room. (They quickly pieced together a white flag which they hoisted up over the cubicle wall.)

Grandpa loved golfing and backpacking. Some of my earliest memories are of grandpa getting ready to go on a hiking trip. He loved going up into the mountains, getting away from people and life as we know it. When I was nineteen, he agreed to take me on a hiking trip. I had never even gone camping before. He packed for me, helped me pick appropriate clothes to wear and bring, and we drove to the east side of the southern Sierras. We planned a three day, two night trip. The first day we hiked about eight miles and 800 feet in elevation and I was exhausted, but he just kept on going. It was breath-takingly gorgeous. Colors were startling fresh and vivid—the spring greens stretching every where, splashed with bright yellow flowers, and a liquid blue sky above. And the water! We camped next to a small creek that was melting directly off of the glacier, and I had never tasted anything so delicious.

The next morning I came out of the tent when I thought I heard an airplane overhead. “No,” Grandpa said, “That’s an earthquake.” It was a loud, gravelly roar like a jet engine with rocks in it. “I had no idea that earthquakes made noise!” I told him. Way up there in the mountains, with no people or buildings or cars and such, the earth shifting is a full-sensory experience—sound, sight, feel. He said it looked like rain, so we should head back instead of trying to stay another night. I had been looking forward to a light day hike and some rest before tackling the return hike, but that was not to be. He kicked my butt, walking all the way back to the car, stowing his backpack and coming back for me and taking my backpack before I could finish the last mile. I got to the car just as the rain started in earnest.

I never asked to go again. He didn’t think women could really do real hiking, and I had proven him right. I wasn’t about to ask for another round of humiliation. It’s too bad, though, because I probably could have gotten acclimated, and it truly was magically beautiful. But, at nineteen, I had no idea that some things you just have to work hard at before you can do them.

When I was a child, grandfather used to read to me. He read short stories, books, poetry. My favorite poem was “The Cremation of Sam McGee” by Robert W. Service. My favorite book was the Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling and my favorite story in that book was “The Elephant’s Child.” The language was lovely and juicy and full of texture and life. For example (and you really should read this out loud for the proper affect): “That very next morning, when there was nothing left of the Equinoxes, because the Precession had preceded according to precedent, this ‘satiable Elephant’s Child took a hundred pounds of bananas (the little short red kind), and a hundred pounds of the sugar-cane (the long purple kind), and seventeen melons (the greeny-crackly kind), and said to all his dear families, ‘Good-bye. I am going to the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees, to find out what the Crocodile has for dinner.” I think this is why I am a writer. [If you want to know what the Crocodile has for dinner, O Best Beloved, you will have to read the story yourself!]

My grandfather loved words (another reason why I am a writer). Back when I was just a child and eating breakfast with grandfather, sometimes he would teach me new words. I am sure, out of desperation when I just could not keep quiet for two minutes in a row (do you know how long two minutes is to a four-year-old?), he would try to keep my mind so busy that I would have to shut up and let him read his paper and drink his coffee in some peace. (Come to think of it, that is also probably at least partly why he taught me how important it is to chew your food thoroughly, at least sixty times per bite he said…) In particular, I remember having a long conversation about the word ‘irrelevant’. We discussed it until we were both satisfied that I clearly understood its meaning and use. And I used it too, on my Kindergarten teacher. She was trying to get me to do what she wanted by using a distraction technique, to which I promptly replied, “That’s irrelevant!” (Score one for the ‘satiable Elephant’s Child!)

My grandfather was Old School. He believed that boys and men are smarter and stronger than girls and women, mainly because girls and women are “too emotional” to be smart or strong. He believed that the hard sciences were the only real thing in the world and studying anything else, like psychology or political science, was fluffy silliness. And don’t even get him started on the frivolity of religion! Mostly he would just snort and mentally place you in the “idiot” category.

Even so, his strong points were very good strong points. I was double-blessed in the careful cultivation of my curiosity from my grandfather and his daughter, my mother. He valued a sense of curiosity, and encouraged children to ask lots of questions and do lots of thinking about the possible answers. A strong questing, curiosity is my legacy and it is a rich and never-ending treasure trove.

I will miss you, O Best Beloved.

Fire

2009-05-08T23:23:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday, May 5th, my grandfather died. He was 86 years old. He died a peaceful death at home with two of his daughters by his side, the end of a long struggle with cancer. As a lifelong atheist, he requested that we have no ceremonies for his death.

Grandpa actually had been in relatively good health until about the last two months. He was too weak to do hiking or golfing any more, but he still had mental clarity and greatly enjoyed reading and conversing. The last two months were harder and he finally asked for help. My Aunt Di, my Aunt Karen, and my mom all met at his house and worked out a schedule. My Aunt Di does not have scheduled work so she took three weeks on and one week off. My mom arranged to cover the one week rotation for as long as needed.

This was a hard time for my mom, not just because her dad was dying, but because of her relationship with her sister. My Aunt Di thinks about family and the world very differently from my mom and that has led to a strained relationship. Having to work together under these circumstances has been very draining for my mom. A small illustration: two sisters in their dying father’s kitchen. Di making the roast chicken she had cooked that week into a pot of soup. They are talking about their dad and what they can do to help him and help each other. Di finishes the soup, looks at my mom and says “What are you having for dinner?”

So, my sister and I planned to visit mom during her next week. We bought plane tickets to fly in and see her on May 7th. On May 1st, Aunt Di called to let us know that the grandpa had decided he was done, and the hospice nurse was putting him on a drip that would reduce his anxiety and, basically, keep him asleep until he died. On May 4th mom drove down to grandpa’s. She was up until 2am with Grandpa and gave him his late night dose of morphine, then finally got some sleep. She woke about 6am when grandpa’s breathing changed. He died about 7:30am.

When my mom called me, I was in the shower, so she left me a message. Since I woke, a song had been running through my head. As I got dressed, I realized what song it was. “What an odd song to be singing!” I thought, and then I got the phone message. The song going through my head was, “go tell aunt Rhodie, go tell aunt Rhodie, go tell aunt Rhodie, the old gray mare is dead.” I haven’t heard that song in years.

Mom asked me and Summer to still fly out. Brad drove me to the airport in Sacramento on Thursday and I got into Santa Barbara mid-morning. We spent the day catching up, visiting with Aunt Di and Uncle Lynn, getting some things done around Grandpa’s house, and making plans for a gathering the next day that Grandpa’s neighbor and dear friend Lee was planning. The house was oppressive, what with Di worrying, and Lynn in fix-it mode, and mom worn out from the waiting and the death and the company.

We decided to go to the beach and then out for ice cream. Back at the house, we had some quiet time, resting in the heat of late afternoon, talking about what needed to be done. We knew there was a fire, but it was on the other side of town, up in the mountains. We could see the smoke, slow columns of clouds up and away to the south. Fires happen in the Santa Barbara mountains fairly regularly, they are a fact of life, and so we put it out of mind.

My dad and his wife called and asked us to out to dinner, and we accepted. When we came out from dinner, everything had changed. The smoke clouds had merged into one huge cloud that took up a whole half of the sky. It loomed over us, and we could actually see flames on the mountain. As we watched, the fire rushed across the mountain, towards our side of town. The wind was crazy. We bought some boxes and when we got back we decided to pack up what we could since the fire had obviously taken a large turn for the worse. We got a lot of items packed up in our car and in Grandpa’s mustang. Di and Lynn showed up with their truck and helped us pack more. Then we got the first reverse 911 call letting us know that we were in a potential evacuation zone.

Summer was due to fly in at 11:45pm and we didn’t know if we would be allowed back into the neighborhood. We tried calling hotels—everything was booked. The news said that 8,000 had been evacuated. We watched television reports, trying to decide what to do. Di and Lynn agreed to stay at grandpa’s until we came back. That way if the evacuation order came they could call us and tell us not to come back. Summer’s plane got in early—we met her at the gate and told her, “Welcome to Santa Barbara! We’re driving home.”

About that time we got the message from Di that the evacuation order had come. She also let us know that my dad had called looking for us and asked us to call. They said they were all ready to put us up for the night. That was much better than starting the drive back home at midnight, and they live only five minutes from the airport. We had breakfast with them in the morning and then just started home. It was pretty squishy in the car, what with all of our gear and some of grandpa’s stuff too.

It had been a hectic 24 hours for us all so we decided to stop at the beach and spend a little time soaking up the sun and re-energizing. Still, it was a very long drive home and we were all very happy to get to Chico.

Years ago, when my grandma died, it was two days after my grandpa evacuated her from another Santa Barbara fire. I think it is only fitting that his death was also met by fire.

My ECE Nightmare

2009-03-20T19:17:00.000-07:00

Dr. Bruce Perry of the ChildTrauma Academy has a graph that shows how the amount of money we spend on programs designed to “change the brain” is in almost direct opposition to the developing brain’s ability to change. We spend the majority of our money in increasing amounts at about age fourteen when our brain structure is already mostly set; we spend almost no money on children below the age of three when the brain has the highest capacity for change. This is a problem.

A long-time friend of our family is a college professor and for years he has said that we need to invert our system: college professors should be paid the least and Early Childhood Educations (ECE) should be paid the most. Dr. Perry’s graph supports the supposition that we would get the biggest bang for our buck if we did, indeed, re-prioritize where we spent our educational money.

The research clearly supports a move towards making sure that we spend more money on our 0-5 caretakers/educators. The current idea has been that we can achieve this change by requiring pre-K workers to have more formal education. The CARES program in California was based on this ideal—increase the standards by encouraging Early Childhood Educators (ECE) to get more education. Many ECE workers have jumped at this idea leading to a whole batch of people now finishing up varying levels of degrees. Great, right? The only flaw is that these people are being told that if they want better pay, benefits, and more professional respect, they should leave the ECE field.

But, let’s say that this changes. Let’s say we flip our priorities overnight and suddenly pre-K caretaker/educators now earn a modest average of, say, $40,000 a year. Doing this work would suddenly look a lot more attractive to a lot more people. Just the fact of earning a nice living wage would automatically increase the respect the field would be given. While all of the ECE workers that I know would agree that, if we put our money where we say our values are, we would be paying ECE caretaker/educators a whole lot more than $40,000 a year, I think most would also be happy with earning a comfortable living wage and some benefits. If more people are attracted to the field because the pay is good, then we can raise the professional standards. The way things are now, higher standards means higher formal education.

So my concern is—what will all of that higher education make of raising our children?

Here is my ECE Nightmare: A future where pre-K workers are highly educated technicians, dressed in stark uniforms, monitoring babies in a scientifically designed, structured, and controlled environment. There will be shelves of bins, each labeled with the developmentally appropriate age and the brain growth designed to be stimulated by the items in the bin. The ECE Specialist will check the notes on each baby or toddler and pull out the appropriate activity or place the child in the “correct” environment in order to make sure that their brains receive the right stimulation at the right time. All of the 0-3 babies would be together, separate from all of the pre-school children, separate from the elementary school children who would continue to be sub-divided into their respective age groups…

My ECE Nightmare is a monoculture world, where babies are raised in uniformity, and the lack of diversity weakens the whole.

I already see this in the work I do at the daycare. Specialists come to the daycare from time to time, to work with a specific child or to do an overall daycare assessment. They talk to the children in soft, patient tones, gently trying to convince the kids that it is best to use your words even as one kid bashes another over the head with a block. I don’t know about you, but when someone is trying to hit me in the head, I don’t try to reason with them by using my words. No, I first defend myself, often using verbal volubility and sometimes adding physical action if necessary to protect myself.

Don’t get me wrong, specialists are great. They do much needed work with children in ways that ECE caretakers/educators can’t because of the holistic nature of the work we do. We are with the children day-in and day-out. What they need to learn from us is how relationships work, how community works, and they learn that by example. The children need to see us get angry, frustrated, sad, silly, irritated, and so on. How else will they learn how to handle their own emotions? They need to see us as we relate to each other, as we relate to other children, and as we relate to them.

Children also need to see other children relating to each other. Older children dealing with younger children show the youngest where they are going, how to get there, and some of the things they will learn along the way. Age stratification of children disrupts this continuity. We already have too much age stratification in our society; The Continuum Concept by and the brain research done by Dr. Bruce Perry and others show that we need to start re-integrating our communities if we want to optimize the brain growth of our babies. So, my fear is that requiring ECE caretaker/educators to have higher academic degrees will lead to Specialists raising our children and, thus, to my monoculture nightmare.

Higher education, at least at this point in time, teaches us to follow instructions, fill in the proper blanks, and jump through all of the right hoops in order to be awarded a degree. Academia has become isolated from the real world, lost behind the scientific model. Objective observation and careful manipulation of variables is not anything like the real world. The scientific model is an amazingly useful tool and we owe much to this way of thinking; however, it is very important that we do not forget that it is but one tool among many in a world of amazing complexity and diversity.

Raising babies and toddlers is messy, chaotic work. You often have to follow your instincts in order to find the path that works for this particular child at this particular time with this particular issue. You have to be creative. You have to be willing to take risks. You have to be open to thinking outside the box.

Of course, you can only think outside of the box once you know what the box is and how it works. Because of this, 0-5 caretaker/educators should have a solid grounding in child development, basic psychology, general sociology, and some anthropology. They also should have experience with music and gardening, with dance and animals, with singing and art and other forms of creative innovation. I am not anti-education, I just think that ECE workers should have more than formal education as a professional base. ECE workers should be able to integrate both the emotional-creative-intuitive-right and the logical-linear-literal-left halves of their brains and bring those skills to the work they do with babies and young children.

Formal, higher education should only be one component in developing skilled 0-5 caretaker/educators. My monoculture nightmare would be greatly eased knowing that the path to becoming a professional pre-K caretaker/educator included flexibility, creativity, and diversity, in addition to formal education.

Resources:
The ChildTrauma Academy/Dr. Bruce Perry

http://www.childtrauma.org/
The Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff

http://www.continuum-concept.org/

Universal Neglect

2009-02-13T14:25:00.000-08:00

One of the continuing education classes that Jen and I are taking right now is a weekly brain development series. It is based on the work of Dr. Bruce Perry and the ChildTrauma Academy. This Wednesday we focused on Neglect, and how it impacts the developing brain. A neurological definition of neglect is “…neglect occurs when the important neural systems in the brain do not receive sufficient quantities and patterns of stimulation required for those systems to develop normally.” In other words, what would be neglect at one point in a child’s life, would not be neglect at another time, depending on what patterns of stimulation a child’s brain is needing at a particular moment in time.

This is different than the legal definition of neglect, which has to do with child abuse. Often this legal form of neglect does not happen in isolation of other forms of child abuse, and so the two often become almost synonymous. In our class we did cover this more traditional definition of neglect. Dr. Perry talked about how lack of stimulation of our senses can atrophy the brain. We saw MRIs of a normal three year old and a neglected three year old and saw how much smaller the later was. And while all of this is fascinating and important to know, this is not the information that excited me.

“Universal neglect” and “social and cultural de-evolution” are what caught my attention. Dr. Perry says that if you look at our brain in an anthropological context, we now have a culture that is socially and culturally malnourished. We have stratified ourselves down into smaller and smaller, more homogenized units until the average household size is now less than three. Our handouts have a graph that show the average household size in 1500’s was twenty, in 1850 it was ten, in 1960 it was five, and we keep dropping. We keep infants at home alone with one or two care takers, our elders are in separate living facilities, we keep children age stratified in our schools and in their extra-curricula, structured activities, and we over-schedule our lives and our children’s lives. A large chunk of our non-scheduled time is taken up by TV, and no matter how varied the programming is, the brain chalks all TV up as only one type of experience.

What all of this adds up to is an anorexic social and cultural experience for our brains. For adults, this is not a healthy thing. For babies and children, this is devastating. Perry says, “The genetic potential for healthy socio-emotional functioning—to be empathic, to share, to invest in the welfare of the community—is better expressed in children living in hunter-gatherer bands or extended families or close-knit communities in comparison with our compartmentalized modern world.” This is what Dr. Perry calls Universal Neglect. Our culture as a whole does not provide “…sufficient quantities and patterns of stimulation required…” for our brains to develop normally.

Pretty depressing stuff, in one way. And yet it is also exhilarating, identifying a source for our universal unrest, our apathy, our sense that things just aren’t right, even when we seem to have everything. Now we know a major cause is that our brains are, literally, starving. We are starving for more and varied relationships, we are starving for multiple deeper relationships. We are starving for community, real community built on continuing, multiple, diverse, and meaningful interactions and experiences. Identifying a cause allows us a place to begin again, and that is a hopeful thing.

I have been saying this for years, and it was just nice to see that the latest brain research backs me up:)

Keep It Flowing

2009-02-04T21:54:00.000-08:00

Keep it flowing. That’s what Lynne Twist says in her book The Soul of Money. Money is one of the most useful ways of enacting our values, of expressing and taking steps to enact our vision of a better future. Fear shuts us down; fear stops the flow. Economically, things are tough right now, and they will likely get tougher. This is all the more reason to invest in each other, to invest in our communities, to work together. We have to ask ourselves, do we want to live in fear, or do we want to work for hope?

Keep it flowing. We do not just exchange paper when we buy something, be it with cash or check or charge. We exchange ideals, we pass on hope or fear. It is all in what we buy and who we give our money to. Some of us are struggling just to pay the bills, to keep food on the table and a roof over our heads. But even we find ourselves with a little extra change, a couple of loose dollars here and there. When I was a kid, my mom used to save up her pennies and dimes and then take us out to Big Al’s for ice cream. We didn’t have much, but we kept what we had flowing.

Some of us are not struggling—we have enough to take care of ourselves and our families and then some. Even so, it is hard not to buy into the fear, hard not to clench down on what we do have, trying to keep ourselves safe. A closed fist feels safer, less exposed, than an open hand. But a closed fist also cuts us off from each other. An open hand allows us to unite, and united we are stronger. I am not saying don’t save. I am saying we should not save out of fear, but out of hope for the future. Keep it flowing.

We have a beautiful opportunity right now to grow a healthier, stronger nation. We have an opportunity to refuse to live out of fear, and instead to choose to live in hope. We have an opportunity to help ourselves by helping others, and in the process to grow stronger, more resilient and more vibrant communities. Shop locally—support those people in your community who run small shops, restaurants, co-ops. Hire locally—if you have some extra, hire someone to organize your garage, clean your house, weed your yard. Donate locally—small local nonprofits are the most vulnerable during economic downturns, and yet they hire your neighbors, help your community, and make a direct difference in the place where you live.

President Franklin D Roosevelt said, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” This is our challenge: to give into fear, or to open up to hope. That choice is enacted, in large part, through how we spend our money.

End of Year Letter, 2008

2009-01-19T11:53:00.000-08:00

Early Childhood Education Work
In early March, Jen and I went to an Early Childhood Education conference in Sacramento (ECE; means ages 0-5). Lisa Murphey, the Ooey Gooey Lady, was the keynote speaker. She talked about her experiences running her own home daycare. We laughed about the parents who try to drop their kids off early, and the ones who habitually pick up late (often the same ones), and how amazing it was that people started paying her on-time after she married a big burly guy and he started working with her. She also talked about the skewed ideas that people have about daycare work, like the time a mother dropped off her kid and two big bags of laundry. She told Lisa, “I figure that you’re here all day.”

Flash forward to November, and Jen and I are at the California Child Development Corps statewide meeting in San Leandro. A group of 40 ECE home and center workers gathered to work on building the profession, networking, and creating an action plan for the year. I don’t think anyone in that room had less than a B.A. degree, and several had M.A.s. We all groaned together when we were told that someone with a two year nursing degree could land a $40,000 a year job, with benefits. That compared to the $8-$12/hour ECE work pays (often with no benefits). I spoke with one woman who, when she complained at her center, was told that she should leave child care in order to get better pay now that she has a BA.

In other words, we want our children cared for by those with little education and low pay expectations. We pay janitors and house cleaners more than we pay the typical 0-5 child care worker. And this is even though the research clearly shows that the first five years of a child’s life are the most important for future academic success. We left with a healthy respect for the amount of work needed to make any real change for society’s youngest. And a determination to try anyway…..

Brad and Nikki Finally In Same State
After a year and a half of living 2,000 miles apart, Brad packed up his house of 13 years and moved from Milwaukee to Chico. I found a cozy apartment in an old Victorian house that has been split up into units. We live in a cool neighborhood near downtown. Our expenses went up and Brad’s income went down, a difficult adjustment for us both. On top of that, Brad was grieving the loss of his family, his close friends, his successful job, and his ability to smoke indoor anywhere, so it was a hard fall for him.

I had the chance to take a part time job with the Butte Environmental Council (BEC) for better pay than the daycare, so I cut back my ECE work and started at BEC in October. The work is challenging, trying to organize a fairly disorganized office, and rework outdated and ineffective systems. I like this kind of work. However, as the months have gone by, more and more duties have been piled onto my list, overfilling my work hours and leaving more undone than done every day. Mostly this is due to the way the place is managed. That and a toxic organizational environment have pushed me to look for a different job. It hurts my heart to say this, but I will also be leaving the ECE field entirely as soon as I am able to find a “real” job (a living wage and maybe even benefits!).

Because of all of these difficulties, living together again with Brad has been challenging. I think we both thought the transition would be easier than it was. Even so, we made it through and are back in sync. I am very happy that he is here living with me.

Down Economy an Opportunity
As all of you know, the economy sucks. Budgets are tight all around, and nonprofits are starting to feel the pinch. Chico has one homeless shelter and it lost a $200,000 grant this fall; it is likely it will have to close. Stories like this are everywhere, brooding like storm clouds.

And yet, signs of giving still peek through. A couple of weeks ago my mom and I saw a guy go out of his way to flag down a homeless man so he could give him a sweat shirt. I know a woman going through a divorce who, even so, has started keeping an elderly woman company and assistance. Almost everyone at my church has been generous with their time and their money, making sure that we can keep doing the work that we do. Sure, we are all stressed, but aren’t we in this together?

And that is the key, I think. We have had recessions before. We will get through it somehow. That isn’t the point. The point is what we do with this opportunity. We have a beautiful chance right now to grow closer, to make our connections deeper, to build real community based on a new idea of shared responsibility for and care of each other. Don’t we all deserve food and shelter and a little something of beauty in our lives?

When times are tight, we are tempted or forced to sacrifice the beauty; some of us may be forced to sacrifice shelter and food. If we pull together, if we share what resources we have, if we let others help us where we need it, and we help others where we can, then no one will have to lose the basics, and no one will have to go without some beauty in their lives.

Hope for the Future
Jen recounted this toddler story the other day: “Aarish once again bit Caitlyn. I knew I needed to try something different so I said to Aarish, “Aarish—Caitlyn is hurt and she needs your help. Please take her inside and help her clean her owie.” He took her hand and as they were walking off together, he asked her, “Caitlyn, what happened?” Caitlyn responded, “You bit me Aarish.” “I’m sorry,” he said, as he continued to help her inside.”

As we move into 2009 and a whole new Presidency, I have hope. I have hope that we will try something a little different. I have hope that we will use this time of struggle to break down some of the roles and rules that keep us separated and powerless. I have hope that we can build deeper, closer community.

A Week In Fall

2008-10-25T10:07:00.000-07:00

This has been a busy work week for me. I am only in my third week of work at my new part time job at the Butte Environmental Council (BEC). I now work there mornings 9am-1pm and at Jen’s daycare from 1:30 or 2 to 5:30. The change is helping my income flow since the BEC job pays more, and yet I also get to keep doing the daycare work which is important to me. The bonus is that I get to get back to doing environmental activism work again.

Fall in Chico means that it is cold at night, occasionally enough for frost, and chilly (in the fifties) in the morning, but the afternoons are still shorts weather (eighties and sometimes ninty). There are splashes of reds and yellows amid the late changing trees and evergreens as I bike through my neighborhood and downtown to my morning job. The many different political signs on in the yards also add to the colors. It is clear that my neighborhood is more of an Obama place, but not exclusively.

I did an internship with BEC back in 1993 and I have kept in touch with the Executive Director, Barbara. She is a no-nonsense kind of person and can be short and brusk as a boss, but I also found her to be fair. She gave out reprimands only when deserved and also gave out praise when deserved. So far I have found her to be the same and I get along with her well. There is some organizational cultural roughness that I will have to navigate, but that is true every where. The people are all committed to a good cause.

Mostly I am doing office restructuring stuff right now—moving boxes, sorting stuff, and finding places for things. I am also doing some of the “running an office tasks” like answering phones, running errands, and filing. Barbara has given me several small projects and just this week started me and the bookkeeper on the large project of working on the membership database. That will be challenging because of the software stuff, but it will be a good challenging. As I learn more about the particular environmental issues, I will be helping Barbara with that side of the job as well. At least, that is the idea. However, it is a small nonprofit and there are always too many things to do and too little time and people to do it with, so who knows how things will evolve!

I have not settled into a new groove at the daycare yet. I arrive just at the end of lunch, as naps are starting, and as the morning person is leaving. Lately the house has been pretty much a wreck when I get there and I bounce back and forth between scrambling to get the house in better shape and keeping the children out of Jen’s hair as she is giving out naps. Suddenly it is 5pm and I haven’t even seen the garden or the kittens…

This week was crazier than usual. Jen spent the week slowly getting everything together that she needed for her horse camping trip to the coast. There were multiple problems with the trailer, cleaning up all her gear, packing, planning what clothes to pack, what food to bring, what camping gears was needed and checking it all. She was able to do a lot of this during the day when she had multiple coverage, but things always come up at the daycare, things that make you veer off course, and getting back is not always very easy. I stayed late most nights this week, which meant 12 hour days. We need the money so that was good, but Friday night I was exhausted.

I am watching Jen’s mini-farm this weekend and so had lots to do once the daycare was closed. Mom called to see if I wanted to go to dinner with them, a great offer at the end of a long, tiring week. It was dark when I got back and I had to put the chickens to bed. This involves snatching the two small oak tree sleepers and carrying them into the hen house. Last night they were higher than usual so I had to drag a chair over to get at them. I locked them all in, fed the four dogs and the ten cats, and then went home to pack an overnight bag and my laptop. I had invited Brad to join me, but he got the flu that has been going around and didn’t want to leave home.

I was in bed and asleep by 9:30 and I slept until almost 8am. I was very tired!

It is a glorious morning! Sunny and not too chill. Chester the pony and Asolly are both crying for Zyphr who is horse camping with Jen. Their whinnies are very sad. The kittens have all scattered to play outside except for Ember who is sleeping at the foot of the bed with Daisy (one of the dogs). I am waiting for Jessa to drop Jen’s daughter Desi off. Jessa had her last night and I will be watching her and the farm until tomorrow morning. Tomorrow Jessa will have Desi again and Brad and I will drive down to San Francisco to see Tim who is visiting.

Thus ends another busy week!

High Hopes

2008-06-26T11:30:00.000-07:00

The last time I wrote about health care, a friend challenged me to write beyond the “horror” stories. Why not write about what we can do to make it better?

Great idea. But the main reason I write about my experiences with the health care system is because there isn’t much that any individual can do beyond sharing our stories. The system is too large, too entrenched, and too interwoven into our jobs, our political system, and almost every aspect of our lives for one person to make much difference. Writing is something that I can do.

So, I thought about it some more. What can we do about our failing health care system? Not much, but I did think of a few things.

1. Write letters to those who can do something. I know—no one wants to hear this one. Even fewer want to do it. Wait, fewer than ‘no one’? Wouldn’t that be a negative number? Well, while that may not be possible literally, it certainly is possible figuratively! Most people would rather have a dose of hives than deal with politics. Unfortunately, when you are talking about large issues like health care, politics is THE tool to use.

So, write a letter. Write a lot of letters. And don’t send emails or those internet petitions. The best bang for your buck is a phone call. Phone calls hold the most weight in political circles. Snail mail is next. Emails don’t count for much. Writing to your representatives is very easy these days; just get on line and go to www.votesmart.org and plug in your zip code, and all of your reps will pop up with all of their contact information.

The other place where letter writing can have a big impact is letters to the editor. If you follow a daily or weekly newspaper and you see a piece on health care, write a letter. You can reach thousands of people, including your representatives this way.

2. Educate yourself on the subject. In part, this is so you can write educated letters to those who can do something (see above). Making sure your representatives receive a ton of letters on the subject is helpful, but what makes a bigger impression is the number of knowledgeable letters received. However, there are more reasons to educate yourself. The more you know, the more you can share with others because it will come up. I am sure you can remember times when the topic has popped up—in conversations at work, at home, at church, when out with friends….

Easy to say, but where do you start with such a large, complicated issue? Find a source you trust. What organizations do you belong to or admire? See what they have to say. Go ahead and search the internet, but make sure to take the source into account. Another place to start is with the biggest political parties: Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent—see what they have to say. Same goes for the large think tanks, such as The Heritage Foundation (conservative) and Rockridge Institute (liberal).

3. Refuse to buy substandard health insurance. Jewel has a great lyric that fits here: “No longer lend your strength to that which you wish to be free from.” If we don’t want the system that we have, then we should stop lending it our strength—we should stop giving it our money. I am not talking about good basic insurance here. I am talking about paying hundreds of dollars a month for a $1,000-$5,000 deductible—disaster insurance. This sort of insurance plays on our fears, and it gets us to pay them for nothing.

Oh sure, they will pay if we get a catastrophic illness or injury, but how often does that happen? Most of us do not end up with some huge medical problem. Most of us have little things like ear infections and in-grown toenails, or moderate things like a sprained ankle or broken finger. My personal opinion is that buying crap like this just feeds the monster that we want to slay. It is like sacrificing virgins to a mythical dragon; we sacrifice our hard earned cash to the fear of what might possibly happen and in the meantime lose what may be right now.

4. Be proactive about your own health care. Prevention is huge. The more healthy you are, the less you will have to deal with our broken system, and the less damage it will cause you directly. This begins with developing a general understanding of how your body works and the things you can do to keep it working well. Being proactive about your health care includes your whole being: physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Our bodies, minds, hearts, and souls all interrelate and each affects the other, so all have to be well tended in order for the whole to grow strong and healthy.

Body: Our bodies need regular, consistent exercise in order to stay in good running order. This is different for different people. Running works well for my mom, but it just gives me an asthma attack. You have to find the exercise that fits your particular body and soul. I say it has to fit your soul because if you do not enjoy it, if you do not feel drawn to it, you will not do it. The key is not really in the type of exercise, but in what fits you. Some great forms of exercise are biking, yoga, dancing, tai chi, martial arts, walking, nia, hacky sacking, swimming, and good old fashioned calisthenics.

Mind: Our minds need regular, consistent exercise in order to stay in good running order. This is especially true for those of us who gorge on TV in the evenings, which is like eating half a gallon of ice cream every evening and then never exercising. Our minds get fat and flabby if we feed them nothing but TV. This is true even of “good” TV like educational program because it is still only flexing one type of mental muscle. We need to flex our other mental muscles—mathematical, reading, problem solving, analytical, creativity, intuition, humor, writing, and logic. Some great forms of mental exercise are cross word puzzles, journal writing, puzzles like the Rubik’s cube, visualization exercises, scrap-booking, reading, joining a debate club (or just arguing with talk radio alone in your car…), jewelry making, sudoko, and photography. Try out Text Twist, a free on-line video game, or for great numbers puzzles, check out the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives.

Heart: Our emotions directly impact our health. Stress can tear our bodies down and leave us vulnerable to illness. Cutting our emotions off from our bodies and our souls impacts our relationships, which, in turn, impacts our physical health. Libraries and book stores are full of self help books. Self help takes a lot of hits, and much of it is deserved. Taking ourselves too seriously is just as much a problem as not taking ourselves seriously enough. How do we find balance so we can keep this aspect of ourselves healthy?

It is different for each person. There are lots of options and each of us is responsible for researching this for ourselves. Some paths include counseling or therapy, and there are many, many different types, each with their own pros and cons.. A great place to start is with your brain, where much of the emotional biochemistry takes place. Check out the book Change Your Brain, Change Your Life by Dr. Amen.

Soul: What inspires passion in you? What makes you laugh? What makes you get out of bed in the morning? Our souls need tending as well as our bodies in order for the whole to be healthy. As there are many different paths for the heart, so there are many different paths for the soul. We each have to explore and find the path that works for us. All that is really important is that we find something that inspires us, something that feeds the ‘self’ beyond our minds and bodies. This can be difficult in a culture that asks us to focus only on monetary gain, a culture that fosters and feeds on fear. A great book to start with is The Soul of Money by Lynne Twist.

5. Don’t go it alone. Join a group that is working on this issue. Individualism is a great idea but it is highly over-rated here in the U.S. One person can not hope to have the impact that a whole group of people can. Not only do groups have more impact, but they are also a way for us to defeat the depression and apathy that comes from isolation.

Will these things change the world? Probably not in any large or quick way. They will make a difference for us as individuals, though. And our little bit will help the whole. You know the rubber tree ant song? Well, it’s true—our collective efforts will add up to larger change. We just have to keep working and hoping.

The Zen Garden

2008-04-14T22:13:00.000-07:00

I know that it must seem like my life revolves around issues of health care and insurance, what with my last two blog postings. The truth is, these issues actually play a very small role in my life. Mostly my life is taken up by two things: the zen garden of the Jen’s daycare, and the UU fellowship in Chico.

The daycare grows by leaps and bounds every day. Literally. I cannot believe how tall the plants suddenly are. It’s like I blinked and then suddenly the yard was full of green and growing plants, bright with flowers. Of course the tulips bloomed a while ago. They were the first and Jen protected them like her first born. She was joking the other day how it is sometimes best to occasionally really lose it, like she does with the first tulips of the year. She said that when you do this, the kids help each other remember. “You can hear the toddlers out there saying to each other, ‘Oh man, you just don’t want to even go there! Jen will just lose it!” “Now,” she said, “They don’t even go near them.” Which is true.

The roses started blooming this week. She has the most amazing set of climbing roses, all with lovely scents. The sweet peas are going too. She has a set with strings all reaching up to the eaves of the garage so they will form a nice little ‘tunnel’ for the kids to walk under. She tried to create another tunnel with the bean plants, but the last frost of the season chomped down on that lovely little idea. Which is too bad because one of the toddlers remembered what she had told him two weeks before—he was walking down the path with several other toddlers when he stopped and noticed the tiny sprouting bean plants. He pointed and said, “Those are bean plants. They are going to grow up and build houses for us to play in.”

Jen is hoping that I will absorb gardening from her; she is constantly asking me to look at such-and-such a plant to see how great it is doing. I have no idea what she is talking about most of the time and have to ask her to actually point the plant out. Which she does, with a full explanation of what type of plant it is, how it grows, what it can be used for, and so on. Still, even with my aging brain, the information will eventually soak in, so she isn’t too far off.

The children are blossoming as well. Each season brings new challenges. It is easy to get caught up in thinking, “how many times do I have to say that?” The truth is, every new thought takes days and days, sometimes months and months, of time to catch and take root. Like sharing—a seemingly simple concept, but it is really a very complex and highly evolved idea. Caitlyn likes to grab onto both of my legs and claim, “Mine!” It is my job to patiently repeat, over and over and over and over, “You have to share me.” Then I pry her hands off both legs, give her one leg and leaving the other free for a second toddler to hug and say, “This is your leg.” Well, it is a work in process, and I have to meet them half way.

Even so, you can see progress within the chaotic mash of same-thing-everydayness. That is why we say it is the Zen Bootcamp: we, the adults, have much to learn from our masters—the children—who know just what we need to work on. What is happening right now? What are those nuances? What are the details? So much to learn, so little time!

Besides the Zen bootcamp, I have taken on many more tasks at church, the Chico Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. This past year I have been doing the newsletter, a monthly task. I have also been on the Moderator Committee. We don’t have a minister, so the moderators have to work with varying levels of speakers to put together the Sunday services. If we have a UU minster speaking, there is not as much to do; if it is a lay person, we might have to do everything except for the sermon itself. This committee has been a challenge because before this year it was a committee of one and this very competent lady is having a hard time having faith and letting go a little. Just getting the committee has been a work of finesse and patience.

This spring, however, I have been drawn to do more. I joined the pledge committee, which we decided was really a stewardship committee. Our church is in transition and the changes need to be handled delicately. Our kick-off was last weekend and it went very well (strawberries and champagne). In addition to this, I have joined the Peace Committee and the Welcoming Congregation Committee. They are both committees where I have lots of experience to share, and so how could I refuse? Finally, I am seriously considering being on the board next year.

Finally, Jen and I have been in the CARES program this year. I can’t remember what it stands for, but basically it is a program that pays daycare people for getting more education. We have gone to lots of workshops this year. Lots of things we know already, but there are always some good ideas too. And we get to meet other in-home daycare workers, so it is a great way to network. The highlight of our CARES program this year was going to a conference in Sacramento where the keynote speaker was the Ooey Gooey Lady. She was awesome!

As a connected part of this, I have gotten involved in one of the sub-committees of the Local Child Care Planning Council (LPC), the Quality, Quantity, and Access to child care sub-committee. Out of this, I was just invited to be on the LPC, and I think I am going to do it. They only meet every other month, and it could be useful as well as possibly helping kids.

I have filled up my time with committees and work. I am meeting fun and interesting people while also doing good work. What would I do with my time if not this? I would watch TV and play computer games. I figure I might as well being doing good. My mind doesn’t really need the extra clogging.

Differing Perspectives: Health Care Take Two

2008-04-07T23:37:00.000-07:00

I had two very different medical appointments today. The first was a birth control consult at Planned Parenthood so I could get another pack of birth control to see me through to my annual check up appointment. The second was with my mom’s dermatologist to look at my problematic underarm mole. She had written to him to ask if he would be willing to see me and give me an estimate on costs so I could save up and self-pay for his services.

In the morning I saw a nurse practitioner at Planned Parenthood. She went over my paperwork, advised me to get a mammogram, or at least a full breast exam, and agreed to give me one more pack of pills to tide me over until my appointment. Even though my paper work made it clear, she asked me if I had insurance. I said, “No, I work in daycare.” I say this because I think society ought to know that most of the people who care for our children do not have insurance, and isn’t that shameful? Her response was to suggest that perhaps I get job training so I could get a better job.

Wow.

So many different things ran through my mind. First, that daycare work is not something someone would do voluntarily, which in turn implies that only the desperate, and uneducated would do child care. That implies that I am desperate and uneducated, and while I resent that assumption, I am more resentful and appalled by what that attitude says about how we should care for our children—only the uneducated and desperate should care for young children. Didn’t she realize how important early child care education is? How important caring, knowledgeable, skilled, and effective daycare is for babies and toddlers? How quality daycare forms the building blocks of school success or failure, and thus of adult success or failure, and how that impacts us all when those little children grow up? Apparently not.

This topic is so large and complex that I couldn’t think up a quick response. Instead, all I said was, “I have a Master’s degree. I have plenty of education. And experience. Beside, I like the work and I’m good at it.” She backed off, saying something about how I must have it all thought out, another comment showing she didn’t get it. Then she suggested that I at least buy catastrophic medical insurance which would pay for any large medical crisis that I might have. She said that was what she had and it was cheap.

“What does cheap mean?” I asked, and she answered that she paid only one hundred and fifty dollars a month. “That’s not cheap,” I said. Again, she backed off, but her tone implied that I was being irresponsible in not buying insurance. After all, I was getting free care from Planned Parenthood, wasn’t I?

I shouldn’t be surprised. Our system is flush with the attitude of blame the victim. Of course it is my fault that the insurance system is failing. It is because people like me don’t do our share and pay big chunks of our barely-making-it-as-it-is-paychecks for insurance that doesn’t even cover moderate medical problems, let alone small medical needs. I would be crazy to buy catastrophic medical insurance. Even as healthy as I am, I need that $150 a month to pay for my own minor and moderate medical care needs out of pocket.

For example, take my second medical appointment of the day. The doctor looked at my mole, and did a check for other problematic moles. He told me that he didn’t like the look of one on my arm, and though they probably both were benign, it would be irresponsible of him not to take them off. He told me that, since I was self-pay, he could waive his fees for the office visit and the procedure, but he would have to charge me for the lab tests since that was done out of office. He asked if that was OK with me, and I agreed.

Without further ado, he numbed up the moles, cut them out, and sent them off for testing. He and his assistant chatted with me amiably, keeping me distracted and comfortable. When he was done, he shook my hand, told me the results would be back in a week, and thanked me for coming in. I was in and out in a half an hour.

I walked away from this encounter feeling like a proud fellow professional. His attitude towards my work was not one of charity, but of doing his part for the community by keeping me healthy, as I was doing my part by taking care of the children. My earlier appointment left me feeling like I was a leach for doing work beneath me and that I was taking advantage of the system to support my lazy ass.

Once again I circle back to hierarchical dualism, the dominance paradigm that rules our society, a world view which is based on fear. Our insurance companies have grown bloated and fat off of this fear. Avarice, conceit, and their own fear-based world view have allowed health insurance companies to become billion dollar businesses; businesses that feed off of the pain, suffering and fear of others. They keep health care limited, a scarce commodity, and use our fear of not getting what we need to keep us separated. Divided, we can do nothing, and, thus, nothing changes.

And yet, there is hope. Within this world of fear, there are pockets of resistance. People like the dermatologist I saw today, who value working together to make the world a better, not a scarier, place. Only by working together will we be able to reach across the divide of fear and begin to weave a world of care and abundance. It is slow, hard work, and we often go unnoticed and unappreciated. And yet it is the only way to truly transform the world. In my book, that makes it worth the price.

A Matter of Percentage: Health Care Take One

2008-03-07T20:27:00.000-08:00

Most of my life I have not had health insurance. This hasn’t really been a problem. My mom was raised by a Christian Science mother and an engineer father, leaving her with a strong belief that we should take care of ourselves and save visits to doctors for only the most acute or persistent of ailments.

This has served me well. I learned early on to pay attention to my body and to assess what was needed on a daily basis. I know that appropriate exercise and eating well are key to staying healthy, and that the definitions of both exercise and diet change over time, which means I have to continually check in, learn, and adapt in order to stay healthy.

So, I don’t worry too much about health care in the sense of feeling I need western medicine all that much. However, I do worry about the increasing cost of western medicine.

When I was a young adult, I was referred to a specialist for an office visit and a small procedure. I had no insurance and was only making just over minimum wage. The whole thing cost $50 which translated to about 20 hours of pay for me, or two and a half days of work. That was a lot of money, but it was within my reach. I was able to pay my debt in full by making do with no entertainment and a little less food for the month.

Contrast this with a similar visit that I had a year ago. Once again I was referred to a specialist for an office visit and a small procedure. The total cost for this visit was $550, or 55 hours of pay. I would have had to set aside half of what I make in one month (about 30% of my gross pay) to pay this bill. This would mean not paying rent and some bills for the month. Or it would mean not paying bills and eating only Top Ramen for the entire month. Any combination I could come up with would mean the loss of an essential, not just the temporary loss of some fun extras.

My needs then and now are modest. I am good at budgeting and I take pride in paying all of my bills in full and on time. I value being financially prudent. I also value my emotional and mental health which, to me, means that it is important for me to have some beauty in my life—roses as well as bread. Even with this, I feel it is important to be fiscally responsible and I don’t let my entertainment spending go beyond the small amount I am able to fit into my budget.

What makes this all the harder is the knowledge that this is not how it has to be. Look at Canada, France, Denmark, and the list goes on. The people with the power and the money—doctors, politicians, HMO CEOs, etc.—could all work together to create a system that cares for those in need, simply because they are in need. Instead our system is based on the idea that making a profit off of other people’s illness and injury is OK, and that some people deserve a lot more reward for their work than others. I work very hard helping to raise other people’s children—shouldn’t that be worth at least half of what a doctor makes? The last year I was with my doctor ex-husband, he made $250,000. Last year, doing child care, I made $13,000. I am not even asking for fair, I am just asking for enough to live on. Or, barring that, prices low enough for me to afford to pay for my own medical care.

The summer before my $550 medical bill, I went to a neighborhood clinic for the exact same thing but in a different shoulder. The clinic had been formed by local doctors looking to combine western medicine with other practices, and to provide quality care for a low cost to the neighborhood. I paid $75 total for the exact same treatment that I received in the specialist’s office the following winter. Of course, this clinic went out of business, which is why I ended up at the specialist’s. Again, our system is set up to favor those making a profit, not those providing care for care’s sake.

I like to be able to pay for the things that I need. I like to be able to show my appreciation for and respect to those who provide quality professional services, and in our society this is done mostly with money. When I had to pay that $50 for medical services all those years ago, it felt good to pay it, even though it made for a rough month.

Medical prices have increased to the point where I can’t afford to pay for even this simple office visit. Not only have health insurance costs grown beyond my grasp, now basic medical care is also beyond my reach, not to mention the disaster even a simple surgery would represent. In the moments when I can get beyond feeling overwhelmed by this, what I am struck by is a profound sense of sorrow. I feel very sad knowing that I can no longer pay for even the most basic of medical care for myself.

This is not a tragedy in the usual sense of the word. My life is not in danger, I have not lost a loved one, or been crippled, or lost my home. On a day to day basis, my lack of health care does not affect my life at all; it is just a low-grade, niggling worry, an axe hanging over my head that could drop at any moment. My story lacks the emotional grab of a traditional tragedy. My story is all too ordinary, all too much the norm for those of us living in the U.S. And that is the real tragedy.

Cold & Flu Season

2008-02-02T21:49:00.000-08:00

I feel like I have been underwater for the last three weeks and am only just now surfacing. Even so, I have not made shore yet. I am still floating in the post storm waves and I would be sunk without my lifejacket (drugs). Still, I can at least catch my breath; I can at least see land from here….

It has been one flu and cold flurry after another since December, and it finally took both Jen and I down. She was bed-ridden sick a couple of weeks ago, leaving me to take up the slack, and has been slowly clawing her way back to health since then. I kept myself from going under too far for the first two weeks, keeping my cold in the moderate zone and my sinus infection treated with antibiotics.

However this last week, after a day of feeling I was out of the woods, I spiked a fever and pretty much went down for the whole week. I limped my way through some work but also took a chunk of time off while Rachel and Christina picked up the loose ends. With their help I was able to stay at home a lot, drinking fluids, reading, and resting. When I was at work I mostly just sat on the couch looking pathetic, with kids piling up on me, and me weakly trying to keep them from sliding off or clonking heads. I was like a big anemic pillow with noodle arms. They didn’t seem to mind.

Of course it was a church newsletter week. I didn’t get the snail mail version out in time (it actually is still not done as I write this), but I did get the email one out. I worked on the damn thing in moments of relative ease and clarity when the drugs were all working at their peak. And then I would take a nap.

Once, when I had a moment of energy at work and I actually picked up the kitchen and then sat down exhausted and discouraged, Jen told me that we are not the kind of people who take well to doing nothing for a whole week. She is right. Especially when doing nothing doesn't seem to help you heal any faster!

The weather has been keeping step with us. It has been cold and dreary and dank and rainy and windy and chilly. There have been bits of sunshine but we have been mostly too sick to take much notice.

And yet I know the rain won’t go on forever. Eventually the clouds will clear and the sun will shine again. Thank goddess for change!

A New Year

2008-01-01T23:59:00.000-08:00

My mom and I went for a walk today in Upper Park. We drove out there about eleven. It was sunny and in the fifties. The parking lots were full to overflowing with cars, but we somehow hardly saw any people. The dirt road was open so we drove in to Alligator Hole and walked up the Yahi Trail from there.

It was warm for winter, but there were still bits of frosty ice in the mud of the paths where they dipped into deep shadow. The parts in the sun had melted into mud which I mulched through in my new hiking boots, happy to have them. It rained all last week so the whole world smelled damp. Damp dried grass, damp fall leave, damp rocks with their damp bright green mossiness, damp tree bark and gravel and scrub brush.

We walked along the creek, listening as the sounds ebbed and flowed from deep silent pools to clear, crisp, happy rapids, and back into deep silence. As we walked into the pools of silence, bits and snatches of bird song filled the void. Bird song in California does not have the full symphonic character of Midwestern bird song. It is more scattered solos and duets. Our feet crunched along on the gritty, muddy trail.

It was high noon, but the winter sun hung low. As if too exhausted to heave herself any higher, she listed her way across the sky, only waiting for the moment when she could dive back into the night. This left even the brightest time of the day softly muted, giving an orangy tinge to the world. Even so, the light sparkled brightly through left over rain drops, and glinted blindingly off the calm waters of the deep pools.

It was a quiet, peaceful walk. A good start to the New Year and a nice follow-up to the ritual I put together for the church service last Sunday. I started with this quote:

“Judeo-Christian dualism has conditioned us to think of destruction as synonymous with evil . . . Most of us live removed from nature, cut off from the experiences that constantly remind more “primitive” people that every act of creation is an act of aggression. To plant a garden, you must dig out the weeds, crush the snails, thin the seedlings as they reach toward the light. To write a book, you must destroy draft after draft of your own work, cutting apart paragraphs and striking out words and sentences. Creation postulates change; and change destroys what went before.” by Starhawk.

I said that the deep of winter is a good time to do some productive destruction. What do we need to let go of, weed out, destroy? What do we need to get rid of in order to prepare the soil of ourselves for new growth? I read a guided meditation, and then had everyone write down what they wanted to weed out on slips of paper that we all took turns burning. I wrote down FEAR.

Then I talked about productive creation. What do we want to grow in our lives? I did a second guided meditation and then passed around bowls of pomegranate seeds for people to eat as they thought about the seeds they wanted to plant. I thought dancing, writing, singing, art.

I will be working my personal soil to clear it of fear, and planting the seeds of creativity. A work in progress, not something to be done in one day, or one year, or perhaps not even one lifetime!

So we went for a walk in the park today and I thought about all of this. And I thought about all of my friends and family. My friends who live in the snow. My friends who live nearby. My family who live all across the country. I said a Buddhist prayer for myself, for my friends, and for my family that we may enjoy happiness and the root of happiness, and that we may be free from suffering and the roots of suffering.

Happy New Year!

InPeace, Nikki

Best Daycare Stories of the Week

2007-10-13T18:56:00.000-07:00

I haven’t written a thing in two weeks due to my most recent Illness of the Month installment. Working daycare for the first year comes with an automatic membership and this one was a whopper. This one was a cold from hell that turned into a sinus infection, turning me into a whiny, pathetic weakling. I’m still in recovery mode, but am back up for writing, and wanted to write about the daycare.

The best daycare stories this week were all “in jokes”.

To understand the first story, you have to know what a mommy huddle is. Co-worker Nicole taught us the mommy huddle. It is something that she developed with her foster daughter, who has Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) as a result of her severe abuse. RAD children have a whole series of symptoms that arise from not attaching correctly to their caretaker and/or from having trust broken. The idea is that children need to re-attach, and that you have to go back to infancy to do this. One of the ways of doing this is creating clear boundaries and making them stick. Sometimes all that is needed is a verbal redirect, but sometimes the kid has a major melt down, and that is where the mommy huddle comes in.

The mommy huddle is holding the child in such a way that they are immobilized with the gentlest hold possible. As the child pulls, we hold tighter, as they relax, we release the same amount. Sometimes we wrap them in a blanket if they need the extra support and/or if we need it to keep from getting bit or pinched. We let them know that we will let them up when they are ready, and when they say they are ready, we have them look at us and answer the question “who is the boss?” If they go back into melt down or won’t look us in the eye, we put them back into mommy huddle. Once they tell us that we are the boss we are done for that round and will do whatever the child needs—extra cuddling, reading a book to them, getting them a drink of water.

Dora, the just turned three-year-old who Jen is becoming a foster parent for, is one of the children that needs and receives the mommy huddle. She has made progress and currently ends up in fewer mommy huddles. It’s true that this is partly because we have become better at working with all the tools available, but there has been growth on her side too.

Thursday afternoon, Nicole, Jen and I were all trying to figure out scheduling for the next week. Nicole and Jen were in the office just off the kitchen while I was in the kitchen watching the kids and adding in my two cents from there. Suddenly I noticed that the floor wrestling that Dora and Carla (a much smaller, scrappy two-year old) were doing was starting to resemble a mommy huddle. As I watched, Dora sat Carla in her lap facing out, wrapped her arms around her and then crossed her leg over Carla’s. Since they both looked like they were having fun, I dashed into the office to call the others quickly out.

“Dora is putting Carla in a mommy huddle! Come see!” They caught the tail end just as Carla wiggled out the bottom and turned to face Dora, smiling. Jen laughed and said, “Carla, you just have to tell her that she’s the boss and then she’ll let you up.” Whereupon Carla yelled to Dora, “You’re the boss!” Dora’s face lit up and she glanced up at Jen, victory in her eyes. It lasted about two seconds before doubt crept in and she turned back to Carla and yelled, “No, you’re the boss!” We all had a good laugh at that.

For the next two stories you have to meet George. George just turned four and is working very hard on using his words instead of hitting. He is a mercurial, sensitive fellow and can go from happy to angry, hurt or frustrated in the blink of an eye. He lets you know it by crossing his arms, humping his shoulders, throwing out his bottom lip and saying “I’m mad at you, (your name here)”. Sometimes he doesn’t say anything, he just crosses his arms and “humphs” at you, pouting. He probably does this about ten times an hour, which is much better than the hitting ten times an hour that he had been doing.

Sammy, one of our precocious three-year-olds, is a very busy guy. He loves to be on the move, running through the garden, swinging on the ropes, finding good sticks to smack inanimate objects (and the occasional kid) with. He has an impish grin and a good-natured love of life that he tries to share with everyone, sometimes to excess; most of the time when he hurts another it is out of this exuberant joy of life and is completely unintentional.

I was talking to his mom one afternoon this week as she was picking him up when she had to redirect him. He crossed his arms, stuck out his bottom lip and “humphed” before running off to the toyroom. I laughed and said, “He got that from George!” She said she had wondered where he had picked that one up.

The final story involves Cathy, a chubby waif who is almost two and has claimed me as her own. Every morning when I arrive, her face lights up in a huge grin, she yells my name and comes toddling over to greet me, not an easy task since there are anywhere between two and four dogs also competing for my immediate attention when I arrive. Everyone knows that she will ask for me when injured or sad, and if I have to leave while she is there, she has to be held and consoled when I go.

She is also your typical two-year old (she’s an early starter) in that her favorite word is “no”. Her answer to almost everything is “no!” Sometimes it is just the usual two-year-old automatic response. Sometimes she can pack a lot of sassiness into the one word and we have to borrow from the RAD teachings and ask her who’s the boss.

I have taken to making sure I explain to her what I am doing next and being clear to help her with transitions. For example, if I am going to go back inside for something, and she is still playing with her eye on me, I will tell her that I am going in and that I will be right back. Or when I am holding her I will tell her that I am going to put her down so I can do the dishes, say, and she can play with the blocks while I do that. If I don’t do this she usually cries and I have found this to be a simple solution.

Thursday morning I had been picking Cathy up on and off while also playing with the other kids and sneaking in some house work. After picking her up and holding her yet another time, I told her that I was going to put her down and finish mopping the kitchen floor. “No” she told me.

“Cathy, I have to finish the floors so I am going to put you down,” I said again. “NO!” she said, at her sassiest. I told her yes and I put her down. Instead of dissolving into loud crying, she crossed her arms, pushed out her bottom lip and said something to me that wasn’t quite clear at first since her words are still a bit blurry around the edges. After a couple of seconds it dawned on me that she had actually said, “I’m mad at you, Nikki!” I slapped a hand over my face to muffle the bark of laughter that burst out of me. She did not just say that! I thought to myself and then just had to share the story with Jen so we could both have a good laugh.

And so ends yet another week at Jen’s Zen Bootcamp…..

InPeace, Nikki

Overview Update

2007-09-24T22:46:00.000-07:00

It was a slow day at the daycare today. We had time to leisurely clean, do laundry, read to the kids, clean up the office, chat about life, cuddle the toddlers, make phone calls, and so on. It was cold and sunny in the morning, warm and sunny in the afternoon. The garden is slowly starting to fade and shift, just as the sun is noticeably setting earlier (the shadows are longer now in the afternoons, and they start sooner). It was a good day for reflection.

So, what have I been up to?

Daycare: Most of you know that I have decided to work full time at the daycare, at least for the time being. Jen and I are writing a book about the daycare, although we do a lot more doing and a lot less writing than we ever hope for. Still, it is slowly taking shape. Daycare doesn’t pay much, so I can’t afford to move out on my own. Instead, I am paying my mom and step dad room and board. It is a win-win situation since I get cheap rent and a comfortable home, and they get to pay a little extra on their mortgage each month. It won’t work once Brad moves out, but for now it is a most agreeable situation.

I have continued to work on organizing Jen’s business. The office is looking pretty good, as are the electronic records. We also launched a daycare newsletter this summer—The Zen Boot Camp Newsletter. Why “Zen Boot Camp”? Well, I have been reading The Places That Scare You by Pema Chodron, and she talks about Buddhism being a lot about practicing the four limitless qualities of loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity. I thought about how much MORE we get to practice all of these things at the daycare and much this work is like a crash course in Buddhism in action… Zen Boot Camp just seemed to fit. (Anyone interested in a PDF copy of one of the newsletters, just send me an email.)

There will be much more about the daycare on this blog, so stay-tuned.

Rogue Theatre: I left the Blue Room Theatre in June and since have been working with a newly forming community theatre group, the Rogue Theatre. Of course, they are brand new so all this work is for free. I am helping them to create a non-profit. I bought a How To book for doing this in California and have been helping them through the steps. We now have filed our fictitious name with the county, filed Articles of Incorporation with the state and are currently working on our bylaws and a budget which are both items needed for the next step of filing for nonprofit status with the IRS and the state of California.

That is the boring nuts and bolts stuff. The exciting news is that we have finally opened our first play. We are doing Pillowman. It is a dark comedy-drama that is disturbing and though provoking. I saw it opening night and it was excellent. Friday we had a reviewer tell us that it was the best play she had seen in Chico in years, so it is all looking pretty good for us. We have no home right now. Currently we are working with owners of different venues to put on different plays. This first one is in an art gallery in between their shows. (Check out the website: http://www.chicorogue.com ).

UUFC: When I moved here, one of the first things that I did was to join the Unitarian church. The one here is called Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Chico, but UUFC is easier. It is small with only about 55 members and about that many again friends. It has been here since the 1960’s and had numbers go up and down, like most UU churches. Right now we have no minister. We are looking for a part-time minister, but there is a shortage right now and a part-time position in a small town just isn’t that appealing. Still, we are hopeful. (Website: http://www.saber.net/~chicouu/index.html )

When I got here, they were looking for someone to take over the newsletter this year. I kept my mouth shut, thinking that surely someone less new would come forward. Yeah, right. So, now I am the newsletter editor of The Messenger which comes out monthly. The biggest trouble, as with all newsletters, is tracking down contributors. Other than that, it is not that difficult a task.

I am also on the Sunday programs committee and have volunteered to help out here and there with our Sunshine committee and hospitality. And this week I am joining the choir. I was invited to join this Sunday at coffee hour and I decided that I would because I bet this will be a meeting that will be refreshing, and I could certainly use some of that!

Odds & Ends: I did a lot of house sitting this summer, which was a good way to bring in a little extra money, and have a place to get off to on my own for a bit. I will be doing some office management work for Jen’s partner, Michael, at least for the fall, which will be another way of bringing in a little side money. I just found out that I am a “fire horse” in Chinese astrology. I have learned how to save things in PDF for the newsletter and it has been very handy.

Finally, I am going to visit Milwaukee for Thanksgiving. A financially reckless act, but emotionally and spiritually brave, kind and joyful.

InPeace, Nikki

Letting Go

2007-09-22T16:57:00.000-07:00

Tree branches swaying
Daffodils dipping
Crows gliding
Hair blowing across my face
skirt swirling around my body
tugging, pushing, prodding
You are not in control here
Laughs the wind
Relax
Come play
Let Go
I lifting my arms to the sky
spreading my fingers wide
twirling with the next wave of air
swaying, dipping, gliding
Smiling
I set my expectations free
loosing them to the wind

© N.J. Hunt 2/13/07