Friday, December 19, 2014

Christmas cookies remembered




Some brain cells don’t die. People think kids don’t discriminate, that they just like sweets. But I still remember the white paper box each of us kids in the youth choir received one year. A generous box of assorted Christmas specialty cookies made in the kitchens of some of the church women. It was more than fifty years ago. I was about eleven.
            I knew nothing about baking, but I somehow knew that these women had put a lot of time and love and skill (sorry, Mom) into these fabulous cookies. Or maybe I thought it was magic. Who knows about memory?  I couldn’t believe this box was for me, just a nobody, a kid! No shortcuts, cheats, timesavers or years-old ingredients. Fresh butter. Exotic spices I didn’t know existed—probably cardamom was one.
            I didn’t know who these women were or how to thank them. I still feel embarrassed about that. I shared the minimum at home and then secreted the rest in my room, to dole out to myself for several days, opening the box lid like we did the paper doors on the advent calendars Aunt Eileen sent us from West Germany.
            The calendars and the cookie box each revealed a daily artful surprise, but the brain cells holding this cookie memory long ago got marked “Keep!"

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Getting from Why to Yes

Just a few minutes ago Climate Parents reached me with the news that the Senate voted this evening (rather than tomorrow as expected) and defeated the Keystone XL Pipeline.  By one vote. Yes, I know it will be back with the new Congress, and yes, this thing I dearly want to see defeated may well be built after all.

But that's not what is on my mind. One particular part of this fight is. It's a cousin to the accident victim's ageless question, Why Me?

Many groups have worked hard the last, oh, this late at night just guessing two years, using virtually all volunteer hours, and personally the story I loved the most was the uniting of "Cowboys and Indians" in their ride on the capitol. But looking at only Climate Parents for a moment, I can't help but pause at their account of their efforts mobilizing, writing letters, calling, staging sit-ins, and I don't know whether to cheer or cry to think of the hours, the sacrifice of normal evenings, money, weekends, bedtime stories for the children, even sleep that you gotta know is behind their hard work. Why, oh why, is this life-on-hold, all-in push necessary, when we should have less onerous ways of being heard and democratically respected?

So my first reaction to the news of true grassroots effort is I'm sad to think of this human cost, and I want to ask why it is necessary when they are so much in the right. For the sake of this thread of thought, if you think they are wrong, hold that in abeyance for a moment. Because just on the face of it you/we should listen to any citizen reaction where the numbers and commitment and sacrifice are this big, and I'll try to say the same to myself where I think a large group is wrong--listen. Just look at the mismatch: the personal sacrifice on one side of the scrum, and the comfort of fat salaries, bonuses, and corporate resources on the other side. Anyone should be able to see that there is something happening here, even if you don't know what it is (thank you, Bob Dylan).

So then I can't get stuck in sadness for the cost that goes into simple defense of our land (time that could be spent creating new well-being for all). Instead, I notice that people like the Climate Parents who come out of the individual consumer cocoons, and come together on common ground, are finding new energies, new strengths, new friends, brothers and sisters. . .this is changing things, whatever the outcome of the Pipeline battle. Maybe "Bowling Alone" has run its course.

Thank goodness. Getting past the Why is getting us deep into the How. And these people have answered the why and how the same way the eminent and humane business thinker Peter Block has: The Answer to How is Yes. They simply said, yes, we've got to do this.

Monday, August 25, 2014

After Ferguson: Beacons to light the way

Some wise voices have come forward since Ferguson became shorthand for fresh race anguish.  A stunningly wise and beautiful piece by Deirdre Smith is more than worth reading—I wish everyone could read it. It’s at commondreams.org and also at my favorite YES! magazine at http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/why-the-climate-movement-must-stand-with-ferguson).  Local Bellingham writer James Wells’ followed up with another really fine piece at
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/08/23/1323973/-Why-We-March-There-is-no-Away-There-are-no-Others.

Why does a green blogger like me digress into race relations? It’s because the two are related, and the above essays talk about one of the reasons why.

The other night my husband and I saw TV news coverage of a counter demonstration seeking to support the officer whose shots killed Michael Brown. I certainly did not want to watch all the news chosen by the media, but we did see the woman in mirrored state patrol-style sunglasses who spoke from a platform, presumably to her like-minded crowd. She called for support for the officer, Darren Wilson, locking that appeal together with a categorical statement that his action was “justified.” Think about that—not that she offered no evidence, no, rather that she linked her support to justification.

Why do we so often feel that way: that supporting someone means you have to say he was right?
Can't we say a person may have been wrong, but we support him or her--that is, we're still friends, or we support fair treatment for the person, or we think that we should have a full accounting and he should own up, and then we try to restore all parties to the community.

Friday, July 18, 2014

The times they are a changin' . . . for churches

It seems we are never starting from square one. We are always dealing with structures and strictures that once served better than they do now, and how to make a shift without tearing the proverbial fabric of shared beliefs, that's what we wrestle with.

The most difficult a knot to undo has to be the one some religious leaders find themselves in from that way-back notion that there is only one correct religious story (theirs, of course), immutable and infallible for all time. To entertain a need for change, a reinterpretation, strikes them as inviting things to fall apart utterly.

But reality can eventually gob-smack leaders and followers alike. Churches are finding a narrative for acting against global warming and other realities. Some churches, that is. Others would be wise to try to see themselves in a cultural struggle in a far-away place, for what it can teach.

Some ancient Hindu texts advised people to relieve themselves far from home, according to an article in Tuesday's NYT, "Indian Children Well-Fed but Malnourished, for Want to Toilets." Spending $26 billion on food and jobs programs and less than $400 million on sanitation, India is finding out that they can't get there from here. Open defecating away from home just fouls someone else's home and they foul yours, and India's children are stunted mentally and physically from being sick so often from fecal contamination in their water--half of India's population drinks from contaminated water--no matter how much good food they get.

So far, even when toilets are provided, they are not always used. It will take some time for doctrines and practices to change. But change they must. And they will. 


Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Rio Grande Mennonites are doing what?

Suddenly I couldn’t be prouder of my Mennonite ancestry. From the top to the bottom of the Rio Grande watershed, Mennonite churches have come together in a new ministry, Watershed Discipleship, which is nothing less than a radical re-placing of Christianity.  If we are  listening. And we should be. Those that despair of cultural change at a glacial pace should sit up and take notice. They are changing faster than the glaciers are now melting.

No denial or delay. No myopia about what our efficient, industrial ways are doing—species extinction, climate destruction, declining natural fertility and “peak everything.” No wrapping themselves in traditional ways of thinking (“No matter what we do to the planet resources, there is always abundance”). And none of the unspoken, and, though I hope not, possibly real reason people don’t act like they take climate change seriously: “Well if this means sacrifice, you go first. I’ll get mine for my family, even if it’s like the classic run on the bank.”

Out west, these churches could be singing the cowboy tune where seldom is heard a discouraging word, because they are armored against the words that have been leveled at me: “You can’t save the world, Jean.” What armors them is that they know that while they can’t save the world, they can save places. And, “We won’t save places we don’t love. We can’t love places we don’t know. We don’t know places we haven’t learned.” And so their Watershed Discipleship community is a learning community and a way forward.

Concrete actions include recently hosting a 17 day intensive on permaculture. And making a Bioregional Covenant to get 75% of their food from within 100 miles by 2025. The Mennonites have always been known as Christians concerned about peace and justice and known as practitioners of a land-based ethic . “Once again in the history of the church, the Spirit is inviting us to radical discipleship” is how organizer Ched Myers characterizes it.

I’m especially impressed they are applying the concept of restorative justice to their theology, with attention to “all those who have been wounded by human development—plant, animal and human alike.”


Gratefully I say, this is the way to revitalize Christianity.

Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Tasting complexity


It’s easy to see the attraction of simplicity. Often the simpler approach means less thought for our tired minds, and promises time savings so we can get onto the next thing in our schedule. And isn't industry ready with inexpensive “solutions” for us?

Yet what do we praise about food? It’s got complexity, we say of a wine we savor. Oh, that’s good, we say of a carefully marinated dish blending sweet and tart, hot and cool. It’s heaven! I said of a bruschetta at Fairburn Farm one August. Now, you can get bruschetta anywhere. A regular restaurant simplifies bruschetta—it looks nice, the diced tomatoes on the slice of toasted baguette, but it’s disappointing, if it tastes at all. We tell ourselves it’s good, that’s what bruschetta is, and maybe we go looking for ways to amp it up. The internet recipes are full of variations, usually simple, with one famous chef using canned tomatoes yet calling his recipe a “late summer bruschetta.” In four minutes flat.

Ah, but our chef Mara Jernigan had gone out to her kitchen garden at Fairburn Farm, near the tiny town of Duncan on Vancouver Island, for her select variety vine-ripe tomatoes then peaking, or bursting, and whatever she did I’m sure there was a whisper of long-aged, fancy vinegar. We bit into small, two-bite bruschetta and our eyebrows shot up and we fell back in our chairs, and we looked at each other like young love. You might say it was a simple dish, but only if you didn’t think about preparing compost-nourished soil, finding flavorful varieties of tomatoes, and growing them in the sun. Slow food, but so satisfying I could go years before another bruschetta, content to wait for a good one, or to prepare it myself when I get the opportunity of flavorful tomatoes.

Everything put before us that evening was memorable, and we enjoyed the company of the other couple on the dining veranda, only one of whom could speak English, though we all spoke “wine” and shared our bottles back and forth, watching chickens scratch in the near yard.

No, Mara Jernigan isn’t there anymore. She moved on to bring her magic to Belize.

Friday, February 28, 2014

Invasive mussels: Lucky for us

It's good news, but also a lesson why not to count on science and technology to keep up with our self-inflicted crises. To get us out of corners we paint ourselves into.

By now we all know about zebra and quagga mussels, how they got across the world to our lakes and streams, and how explosive is their proliferation when they invade. And you can't apply poisons unless you want a dead lake.  

Now the New York Times reports (Tuesday Feb. 25, 2014--A Scientist Takes On a Silent Invader) that biologist Daniel P. Molloy is hot on the trail of a safe agent to control them. Very exciting news.

Then if you read the story you see how lengthy and tenuous was the path to this success. How much the new discoveries hinged on things we couldn't count on. The story involves twenty years of concentrated work. And before that, it is the story of the education of this one Dr. Molloy. It goes back to 1956, when his father, a New York firefighter, died in a disastrous fire. Molloy was eight at the time. He and all the other children who lost their fathers in the fire were given scholarships to Fordham University. Now I'd say that chance at a fine education has paid off for all of us.

Wow. Would that happen today? I recall that the firefighters in our huge national tragedy in 2001 weren't offered much but our honorifics, at least until a hue and cry went up.

Yes, there are marvelous technological developments on the drawing boards around the world, each hoping to help us with our gathering disasters: climate disruption, species extinction, and related messes.  But how slow it can be. And paraphrasing the lines delivered by Clint Eastwood, "do we feel lucky? Do we? Do we?"


Monday, January 20, 2014

How to live in this corporate world?

There's a strain of Puritan in me. Which seeks to be blameless, harmless, but is narrow and has too much fear at its base, even though it has a sprinkling of love. There's another strain in me of seven-generation vision, which is more expansive, though tinged with sorrow at earth's losses. The emotion often doesn't want to flow through me and leave me softened and at rest, but instead eddies in circles along each side of the flow.

Late-summer brought the pleasure of painting our house a vibrant new color. Of truly owning our home instead of going for safe resale value. We went for very high quality paint, not wanting to paint again for 10 years. We went to our local paint store, naturally, which has a wonderful, knowledge-deep staff. We asked about low VOC, and learned the entire industry has been moving to lower volatile organic compounds in paint, and we should be confident in our selection. We chose their Pittsburgh paint.

We even got a rebate, from PPG Industries. 


So it was with a familiar sinking feeling that I read in the Sunday Seattle Times that PPG had been sued by the West Virginia Department of Ecology over repeatedly dumping illegal amounts of mercury into the Ohio River from Natrium, south of Wheeling, West VA. The reason this was mentioned was the big story out of Charleston, West Virginia and this month's disaster of their ruined drinking water. The article was about the backdrop of West Virginia politics setting up the disaster to happen.

The way it works there is interesting. PPG actually asked Ecology to sue them. This would enable them to stave off being sued by two environmental groups under the Clean Water Act. Apparently, they were confident the state would be a friendly adversary. And indeed, the state could seize the issue this way and settle with PPG, who could then return to business as usual? It's not clear from just this sidelight in the larger story. But was is clear is that the West Virginia governmental bodies are anti-regulation. You'd think that was maybe natural given the importance of coal mining there.

You'd be left scratching your head. Because it says that today coal mining only employs four percent of WV's labor force.

Anyway, back to my title question. How can I live in this big corporate world? Was there a better choice of paint I wasn't aware of?  Or that I didn't want to be aware of because of the budget and the rebate?

And then I think, right action can't all rest on my shoulders. How to live? My answer for now is to participate in the cultural discussion, and push for shining light on our dark corners. Things do get addressed that way, in time.