Yesterday's blog-a-roo!

So, in response to yesterday's big blog post about health and energy and the mind, I am really excited about this! I saw on the library catalog a book by a lady who uses YOGA to treat mental health issues in children, and then I found a web page for yoga therapists! I am super geeked out.

Minds, bodies & children

So today I read an article about parents whose 4-year-old daughter died because of a lethal overdose of prescription drugs. Her psychiatrist had diagnosed the girl (and her two older sibligs) with ADHD & bipolar disorder, and testimony for the prosecution claims the parents kept the girl overdosed on meds to keep her asleep and docile for long periods of time.

This case is obviously the extreme tip of the iceberg, but it is indicative of the way the mental health system functions in our society today and I hope it is drawing attention to a critical problem: the massive consumption of prescription drugs for mental symptoms.

The human brain is arguably the most complex biochemical-energy system on the planet, and neuroscientists have barely begun to figure it out. Drug therapies for the brain have come a long way, but they are still crude tools for a delicate situation. Every drug has a complex array of side effects (and intended effects) that change the brain's chemistry is ways we aren't prepared to even analyze.

I believe that when it come to tinkering with the brain, everyone involved should take the most conservative path. Somebody's going into seizures? Fine, give them drugs. Somebody's blacking out and losing memories and completely afunctional? Drugs might be helpful. Somebody can't concentrate in school? Try something else. Feeling down all the time? Don't just reach for a prescription--try something else first. If you're under the age of 25 (neuroscientists have suggested that in our information-heavy society, the brain does not show the signs of final maturity until about that age nowadays), and your brain is still growing-- try something else first.

It is hard to accept that the mind is part of the body, and that bodies have their own healing wisdom. If you take away the things that block the body's healing mechanisms, it will take care of itself. If you fuck with it, you're going to cause more trouble than it's worth.

There are many successful alternatives to drug therapies for many of the mild afflictions of the mind. There are a lot of great psychologists doing work out there, and that's awesome. But let's not forget that the mind is primarily an energy system. As a supplement to work with a pschologist, retraining the pathways of brain and giving patients better coping strategies, most people could greatly benefit from treatment with an energy worker. Systems like reiki, qi gong and yoga can give people the tools they need to change the way energy works inside their body and inside their mind.

I don't feel the need to go into details, but I know for a fact that energy work can change the health balance of your mind. I know that it changed mine greatly for the better.

As for the parents with the dead four-year-old, well, it's a sad story. And whether they are guilty or not, it doesn't really matter. They have lost their little girl in a horrible tragedy for which they are certainly responsible in some way. They'll live with that forever, and that's a long, long punishment.

Busy is good!

Yesterday was awesome. I got a little bit of everything on my list done: did some newbie-yoga; wrapped up the 2nd draft of Part I of the novel; took notes for the potential philosophy project; painted; killed zombies; and ate Doritos. It was such a good day.

Today, I'm not working quite so hard. Instead I'm socializing, which is a good thing. A few nights ago I went out with my co-workers for drinks, and it kind of sucked. Today I went out for lunch with my sister and now I'm hanging with her, which is much, much better. It definitely reflects the difference between socializing with people you know and are very comfortable around, and socializing with people you don't. I have been out with one of the girls before and we've always had a great time, but when you throw a whole group of people together, it just isn't the same.

Jeez, this is a lame post. Time to surf the library webpage and drink coffee!

The Dogs of Babel

Yesterday I threatened John with a long post about how phenomenal this book (The Dogs of Babel) is and how much it resonated with me and how perfect it was. Well, he lucked out. I used up all my fuel yesterday in a forty-minute in-depth summary/plot analysis/symbolism discourse/harangue that made his eyes roll up in his head. Poor guy! Anyway, today all I will say is READ THIS BOOK!

Actually, "The Dogs of Babel" was recommended to me by a co-worker, who also recommended "Ella Minnow Pea." They turned out to be wonderful books. They broke the 2+ year novel drought that I've been in. I can't remember the last time I read a novel in the literary genre that I liked. There was a period of about four months right after Fiona was born when I was reading books from Ed & Claudia & Rekah's libraries (those are some of my brother-in-law's family members) and reading some wonderful stuff. And then ... nothing. Every book I touched turned into crap. Stuffy, pretentious, tedious crap. So I pretty much switched over to only reading fantasy, mysteries and children's books, because they might not be pretty, but at least they don't think they're LITERATURE.

But "Ella Minnow Pea" and "The Dogs of Babel" are pretty. They are witty. And they are wise. Read them!

PS: I know book titles should be italicized, but the italics are being screwy on blogger today. Also, the possessive of "brother-in-law" should probably be "brother's-in-law". I apologize.

At long last!

So after screaming at my computer and threatening to throw it out the window, this blog entry is a little shorter than I planned it to be. I mean, it's my first post in close to a month!

Anyway, here's a silly quote:
"One is never enough for those who shop in the supermarket of crime."
--Moo, The Case of the Missing Jelly Donut, by Denys Cazet

David Wolfe is alright

So I hate to admit that the guy who wrote "The Sunfood Diet Success System" is right about anything, but he really is right about a lot of stuff. (Just don't read the poems. Ouch.) Oh sure, the raw food stuff, he's got science to back him up, but it's his career advice that's really proven itself.

See, he suggested that to figure out what you should be doing with your life, you should look at the things you enjoyed most between the ages of 7 and 14.

It sounds simple, but the other day, it really helped me think through a crazy idea I've had lately. You see, when I was 11, 12-ish, I started taking karate classes. And I loved them. LOVED them. For the first time in my life, I felt excited about doing stuff with my body. I always wanted to be a dancer or a gymnast or an ice skater, but we lived too far away from a place to learn, and plus, I was always sick and I was always fat. But I started to be really good at karate. And then somebody gave me their second-hand gi, and I started feeling self-conscious (because the pants so noisy and attention grabbing) and then I stopped wanting to go.

The same thing happened when I took karate when I was 23. I loved karate, but I got sick a lot and missed a lot of classes and just felt really self-conscious and awkward and got too ashamed to go. It didn't help that I was still the fattest person in my class. I always felt awful about being fat in karate class.

Lately, I have really missed karate, but I have also been busy exploring other things in my life. But about a month ago the weirdest thought crossed my mind: I'd really like to be a yoga teacher. What? I've never even taken yoga. But the thought started rolling some balls in my head, and they connected with some other balls that were set in motion a while ago by chance interactions at the museum. And now I am really thinking that I want to study Qi Gong and eventually become a Qi Gong practitioner.

Qi Gong is a lot like tai chi (in fact, tai chi is a subset of qi gong) and is connected to Kung Fu. It can be a martial art, but it is also a form of energy work and can be done silently without moving. Qi Gong experts can use the movements of qi to heal people.

I have really been interested in Reiki, which is an energy healing practice from Japan, related to qi gong. I am planning to save some money and take a few Reiki classes. I would like to build my own Reiki practice. But I think qi gong would really help me in many, many respects, and would only build my Reiki abilities.

All of these thoughts draw on experiences I had when I was between the ages of 7 and 14. Not only did I fall in love with karate, but I had a number of strange interractions with sick animals that made me want to learn more about alternative healing modalities. After years of not knowing what to do with my life, I feel really excited to reach back to these dreams that have haunted my memories. I am finally in a place where I can start to work toward making those dreams happen.

Joy from the mailbox

The Seed Savers Exchange catalog came today! Yippee! Hooray!

Do you think my landlord would notice if the back lawn disappeared?

Carbon continues!

Kt, your comments are so great! They just make me want to think!

About third world countries: I think there's a lot of evidence out there that suggests the US has heavily "encouraged" third world countries to be so dependent on their exports. Think about all the nasty stuff England did to the Colonies to keep us an export-based economy--we are doing all that and more. Our fellow American nations (okay, I mostly mean Latin American nations) are in a situation that goes far beyond my ability to make a prescription for their betterment. But I do know that they are not going to be able to help themselves until we stop trying to control their governments and their economies. We need to treat our neighbors like equals and not like ... well, the way we do.

I think that refocusing our efforts towards local production of EVERYTHING (as much as feasible) is the most important step to creating transparency in the production system and breaking down the crippling grip of corporations. To make a fresh stab at my analogy to the American Revolution, England's control of the Colonies was eroded by the efforts of the citizenry (and by that, I pretty much mean women!) who mobilized to create and source colonial produced goods. Groups like the Daughters of Liberty worked together to make the Colonies self-sufficient.

Right now, we give up the production of everything we consume to manufacturers and mega-corporations who manipulate us though advertising and who work against us to make a profit. Things like protecting our resources are not a priority for these companies. The only way to be sure that your money is not conspiring against you, your values and your best interests is to source your goods from people you can really trust, that can show you where your stuff came from. Make it easy for yourself: do it yourself!

Also, if all this posting about food production seems a little theme-y, it's because I'm reading a book called "This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader," by Joan Dye Gussow. She is a seventy-year old lady who grows all the vegetables (and a lot of fruit) that she and her husband eat all year long in her own New York State backyard. That's right, when she goes to the grocery store, she's stocking up on grain products and milk, and that's about it. It is incredibly inspiring, and I hope that everybody out there can take a page (or even just a paragraph) from her book and start growing even a little bit of their own food. It will connect you the earth; it will please your tastebuds, and it really will help the environment. And it's fun. And it's good exercise!

Addendum

And yes, before any wiseacres get on here and scold me for driving to Freddie's, let me just say that my family is working to use alternative travel resources. I use mass transit to get to work, John rides his bike 3 times a week, and Fiona and I have started carpooling home from school on Mondays. And all last minute trips to the grocery store are done on foot, at the food co-op. Some weeks I do our real shopping there, too.

See? We're working on it!

Internal combustion power

So my friend Kt pointed out that the biggest producer of greenhouse gases, the biggest contributor to the carbon load, is the internal combustion engine. I think she was trying to draw my attention to things like driving habits and the need for mass transportation, but I of course saw it as the perfect way to simplify all my talk about food. (Yes, I really do think about food 98% of the time. Okay, that might be an exaggeration--but not much of one!)

You see, pretty much anything you buy was produced, processed and shipped to you using an internal combustion engine. The wheat in my sprouted wheat bread today was harvested using a (probably diesel-fueled) combine, which shot the wheat berries into the back of an idling truck (also probably diesel-fueled--if anybody needs biodiesel, it's a wheat farmer). The truck takes the wheat to the farmer's grain co-op or grain buyer, which probably sells the bulk of its grain to an international food conglomerate, like Archer Daniels. They're the middleman. My wheat somehow went from the grain co-op to Bob's Red Mill, who probably doesn't shop from Archer Daniels. In fact, my wheat was very likely magically loaded by a mysterious middleman, trucked from the middleman to a barge on the Columbia River (because my wheat is probably from Eastern Washington), and then barged down to Portland. The barge was also probably diesel-powered. From Port of Portland, it was trucked to Milwaukie (this is the best possible scenario; there is a good chance this stuff wasn't sent directly to Bob), where it was put into barrels for the bulk bins at Fred Meyer. Then Bob's loaded the barrels onto a truck, which probably went to the central Fred Meyer werehouse, was sorted into orders for the various stores and finally trucked to my Fred Meyer, 1 mile from my house. John drove me to Freddie's, and I bought it, drove it 1 mile home, and began sprouting it 2 days ago.

[Sidenote: This whole process, with a little planning could have gone like this:
ME, on the phone: Dad, could you buy 10 lbs of wheat berries from your neighbor when you help him with his harvest? I'll give him $.89/lb, plus $6 for Priority mail.
DAD: (choking on his coffee): $.89/lb? Are you crazy? I'm going to start growing wheat and selling it to you crazy cityslickers! I'll be a millionaire!]

Now these are raw wheatberries. The flour in the bread went from Eastern Washington on a diesel-powered train to the Midwest, where it was processed into flour, then shipped back to Oregon ... etc, etc.

We're talking about food with mileage, and that's not even food that was grown in another country. I shudder to think about the trip a banana takes, or how much gasoline was used up in its journey. BTW, non-food items really get nailed. My laptop, for example, when you take into account the trips the original raw materials took to the US to be made into components, then the trip the components took to China or the Phillipines to be assembled, then the trip from China to the US port, from the port to the regional werehouse, from the werehouse to the store, to my house, has more mileage on it than your average second-hand Honda Civic.

So what I'm saying is, you don't even have to own a car to use gallons and gallons of gas just about every day. Everything you buy is guzzling the stuff like crazy. You have to remember that it matters where things come from. It matters who sells it. It matters how much it's been processed.

So this summer, when I turn my back porch into a vegetable garden, you'll know why. I like knowing my tomato only had to travel 5 feet before I ate it.

Carbon

So my New Year's resolution this year is to reduce my carbon load. Amazing, isn't it? I mean, I remember hearing that term at OMSI eight (ten?) years ago and thinking "Carbon load? Who comes up with these names?," but now everybody uses that term, and everybody's got it on their mind. [Okay, maybe I should clarify: everybody worth knowing, that is.]

Anyway, it's amazing how many different things you can think of that jack up your C.L. This morning, I was thinking about our pancake syrup, which is organic goodness brewed up from maple and corn syrups. Tasty. But it takes a lot of energy to turn tree sap into syrup. They cook down something like 16 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon syrup. And I shudder to think how much energy it takes to make sugar cane juice into sugar crystals for my coffee.

Speaking of coffee, how much fuel was wasted shipping that stuff here from South America? And then on roasting and grinding and brewing? Yikes, I've got to stop drinking the stuff!

Showers. Travelling. Watching TV. Farting. Breathing! It all adds up. And every single choice you make, every single day--it adds up. What am I going to do about it? And what are you?

Snowy

So my family is out playing in the snow right now, and I'm snugly at home, drinking tea and looking up recipes for digestive biscuits. I can't say there's anything more wonderful in the world!

I was just reading The Fat Free Vegan, who was discussing how much has changed in both her world and the online vegan world in the last year, and I definitely agree. I feel like in the last year or so, more and more people have become accepting of vegan eating. Here in Portland, we have vegan restaurants and grocery stores and even raw-food options--all over the place. They have exploded this year. And that is great. That means that the world is becoming more accepting of a beautiful, loving, healthy lifestyle. If people can do that on the visceral level food, what can they do if they open up at other levels?

We saw people take these thoughts to the polls this year. I hope we see them take these thoughts and values into their families and their shopping habits and their hearts, because if they do, the world is going to get a lot more beautiful.

Terminal Airhead

I tend to do a little "New Year's thinking" around this time of the year, and I usually find my best insights have come from the January thoughts that I stir up out of the winter mud. And this year, I think I've come up with a doozy.

I am going to give up being smart.

Let me explain that one. You see, being "smart" has been a big part of my identity for as long as I can remember, and the last few years, it's been a serious weight around my neck. Yes, I have a fine mind. It can do a lot. But I am also an airhead. A serious head-in-the-clouds, floating around in outer space, at-one-with-the-birdsong-and-rainbow, airhead. And when the airhead and the "I know everything, damn it" parts of my life come together, the result is not pretty.

I feel dumb a lot.

You see, while I do know a lot about a lot of stuff, I also don't know a lot about a lot of stuff, and I often don't like to admit it. And then when I've half spaced out what's going on and then try to pull a "I know everything" off, I just wind up looking like an asshole.

There are a lot of other good reasons to let the know-it-all go. You see, knowing everything gets in the way of learning new things. It gets in the way of being open. It gets in the way of letting the universe sweep you along its glorious plan, and that creates a lot of suffering. Being a know-it-all has really kept me down.

Being an airhead, however, has done nothing but bring me joy, a fresh and happy mind, lots of friends and the gift of magical insights that take me to new and glorious situations. That's pretty good in my book!

The mold, the mayhem

Another delightful day spent combating the onslaught of mold around our windows. Ahh, the scent of rotting wood trim in the air. I just love aluminum frame windows that no one has taken care of in 40 years!

I did think of one cool idea: the condensation that collects on the windowsill is essentially distilled water. If I could just run it straight from the window frame to a clean jug, I could be generating my own drinking water WHILE I SLEEP.

Jeez, I think even Martha would be impressed.

Suckage

So I seriously suck on blog updating. Um, yup, that's about it. My ability to spin fun words about my life is cramping. Maybe I need some word yoga to get back in the saddle again.

On the plus side, I've really been getting a lot of mileage out of my birthday sketchbook.

Suckage

So I seriously suck on blog updating. Um, yup, that's about it. My ability to spin fun words about my life is cramping. Maybe I need some word yoga to get back in the saddle again.

On the plus side, I've really been getting a lot of mileage out of my birthday sketchbook.

double-plus ungood day

Today was not a good day. Today was a bad day. Today was my worst idea EVER.

Do not take Trimet to the most distant, most enormous fabric store in town and then expect to get any shopping done. Expect to waste 4.5 hours of time, spend $4 in bus fare, $6 on lunch, get totally pissed off at everyone who lives east of 52nd Ave, nearly get hit by an SUV (causing you to scream expletives so loudly your nearly lose your voice), make your kid cry AND NOT BUY A SINGLE PIECE OF FABRIC OR ANY KIND OF CRAFT SUPPLY.

Then you will have to eat two pieces of fudge to recover from the entire experience.

Blind as a bat

In the weakest move of the weakest of administration that has ever set foot in Washington, DC, the Bush administration today did its darndest to keep money out of the hands of blind people. They are appealing the court mandated redesign of US dollars so paper bills would be usable by the visually impaired--and they actually argued that the blind didn't need to use paper currency, because they could just use credit cards!!!

Wow. That's just . . . amazing.

On a separate note, I watched two great movies on Saturday! Now, I don't usually watch 2 movies in one day, but I was sick, so I made an exception. And both of these films are worth making exceptions for! 1) Because of Winn-Dixie--this is just cute and precious enough without being so cute and precious you want to throw up. Plus Dave Matthews works in the coolest pet store in the whole world. 2) Bad(der) Santa--okay, this movie is brilliant. It was so awful and cringe-inducing that it turned out wonderful. And the kid who plays Therman Merman is AMAZING.

Pop ups

So I'm trying to get used this new computer, and I'm telling you, sometimes it's nuts. I mean, pop-up blocker is built-in to this edition of Explorer, which sounds great, but really it turns out that 9 times out of 10, I want pop-ups! I mean, I wouldn't click the Barney's button if I didn't really want it to pop up!

Hot dog, I love style.com.

Brain fluff

I feel like such a feather head. I honestly have not read a novel in close to 3 weeks. First October W came. Then September and October Vogue came. Then November W came. Then November Vogue came. Somewhere in there November Martha arrived.

I am a bubble brain.

Okay, I guess I did read Vibrational Healing by Joy Gardner. That has to count for something.