Frowny Face

There is little to smile about today. The Senate passed their bill approving the Keystone pipeline. The Koch juggernaut is aiming $900 million at the election process. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has declared climate change can no longer be prevented. Ukraine is a battleground holding against a superpower. ISIS is threatening more murder. The flu is raging and its freezing out. There are some days where all seems lost. I am not going to dig out a "feel good" adage or find a way to look on the bright side. There are times when we just need to take in the reality of our situation and figure out what to do about it. What can we do about a culture that will "drill baby drill" us right out of existence? What can we do about a government that is not working for the people but for the fat cats who need no help. What can we do to aid societies around the world struggling to create a democratic future against staggering odds? Its true that at any given time the news can be overwhelmingly bad but one way or another we steer a course thru the chaos and persist. Today is not one of those days. Looking around you wouldn't know that there was a concern in the world. We are still buying SUV's like fossel fuel is as clean and sweet as bottled water. (Don't get me started on bottled water.) We are lining up at the Apple store as if the iPhone is our key to immortality. We keep electing people too concerned about their political futures to concern themselve about the future of the people and the country. Wait, maybe I am reading the wrong news reports. Maybe I am watching the wrong news programs and maybe I should just change the channel on the TV. Yes, that's the answer. Change the channel. That will fix it.

Pajama Day

After sleeping in til 9 this morning I am declaring this my unofficial pajama day. Slogging to work yesterday thru freezing rain and slippery roads, and putting in a mean eight hours, make it that much more luxurious to say NO to going anywhere today. The spontaneous decision to stay put supports the notion of not making any plans cuz its kind of too late to do so anyway. But not going anywhere doesn't mean I don't do anything. I have already written and submitted one grant application on behalf of a community garden project, and I may do another one. I have already read thru most of the Sunday New York Times and will next wrestle the crossword puzzle. I am about to twist and "Om" my way thru a yoga practice and then maybe make some soup. But that is about the sum of my ambitions. More important, the fact that today we celebrate the legacy of Martin Luther King is all the more reason to sit and reflect. Special days like this are set aside for reflection on the genesis of those celebrations, the people and situations that engendered them, and how they mold our own way of living. News articles have called 2015 the year of action and its clear there is still much to do on many fronts. Today is a good day to decide what form those actions will take.

It all starts with a seed

I have been thinking about my vegetable garden, which is not unusual as I am often thinking about growing, picking, preparing or eating homegrown veggies. So naturally this is the time of year those thoughts turn to seeds, i.e. which seeds to pick from my library, which to buy out of a myriad of catalogs, which to swap with friends, and when to start them growing. As we set about planning for a community garden a friend and fellow gardener remarked to me recently "It all starts with a seed". Indeed all good things start with a seed of some kind. In my case, it leads to an abundance of tomatoes, greens, squashes, beans and more. But it could also be a seed of an idea, a musical phrase, a splash of color, an unaswered question. These in turn can lead to a symphony, or watercolor, or scientific breakthrough. Seeds are in fact just the possibilities we can crack wide open every day if we so choose. I can't compose symphonies or paint waterlilies but I sure can dig in the earth then watch my garden grow and bloom again this year.

The key to pacticing the Three R's

Most of us have heard the three R's of learning, i.e Reading, 'Riting, 'Rithmetic, many many times. There are three more R's that are just as important and that make a huge difference in our communities and on the planet: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. As a practical matter this boils down to a few simple actions: 1) don't buy things you don't need or items that come in wasteful packaging or that cannot be recycled, 2) reuse and repurpose what do you buy - a rule of thumb might be to reuse at least three times; then finally 3) recycle whatever solid and organic waste that you can. Fundamentally this can be summed up in a fourth R - Rethink what you do every day. When shopping, don't let store clerks toss one item into a plastic bag rather carry it out as is or bring your own cloth bag. When you're done with a package see if it can be used to store something else or grow a plant or line a litter box. And when you have cleaned up the kitchen or cleaned out the closet see what you can recycle back to the supermarket, or in municipal recycling or in a compost pile or at a thrift shop. The three R's of the environment start with one: Rethink then rethink again.

Resolving to simplify

I resolve this year to do the one thing that can make the most difference in the most areas of my life individually and our lives collectively. Simplify. To simplify means making something simpler or easier to do or understand. To more easily understand and focus on the essentials of living well it seems to me that getting rid of the clutter that generally surrounds us is step number one. The digital age has layered electronic clutter on top of the materialistic clutter that has defined our society since the end of the great war to the point that we are constantly distracted and almost never have nothing to do. Stuff is everywhere....stuff in the garage so there is no room for the car, stuff in every room of the house so that organizing and cleaning is a full time job, stuff in the car so that there is no room for passengers, stuff in the fridge that has been forgotten and morphed into a living thing, stuff in the closet that hasn't seen the light of day in years. And we stuff our heads with Facebook, music, news, movies, TiVo, Roku, Hulu oh my. Enough. I vow that I will have 30 minutes a day to do nothing except breathe, and look, and listen, and touch, and just be.