Finally This August Garden

Finally this August garden after scary freeway hours
sore butt
back up the hill into the dust, and this moon rising orange.

Gathering dinner,
the particular way you twist a cucumber at the stem
to make it release into your salad hands-

 Then sit beneath hummingbird's rhythmic whirr
while light moves between clouds
on fields golden rolling over evenly cut oats harvested

Remembering why the freeway hours..
 To visit Mommy,  and cook her 85th birthday gravenstien apple kuchen
like mama made it
"Mama didn't use egg I think."
We improvise,

and laugh in the morning, apropos of nothing and everything
requiring hankies to blow our noses and wipe our tears.

Book Review: The Brain Dead Megaphone

In one of my former lives I was a book seller, in the quaint town of Cannon Beach, Oregon. I worked for a wonderful family of teachers who, for 10 years, made a valiant effort to keep Ecola Square Children's Bookstore vibrant and alive.
  In 2003 we all said goodbye, and the little bookstore on the south end of town is now condos above shops.  The discount chains and  internet sales washed over us like one of those big waves on the beach which come fast and hard, and are impossible to outrun.
During those ten idyllic bookstore years I wrote book reviews for The Independant Booksellers monthly, 'Booksense' .
I so miss those days of opening a box filled with publisher's advance copies, all free.  I could read and review what I chose. For a book nut, that put me in the vicinity of heaven.
I am still reading, between yoga classes, tutoring gigs, farm work, and projects.  I give you my latest inspiring find:
The Brain Dead Megaphone, a collection of essays by George Saunders. It works as a summer vacation read, more elevating than a romance or a mystery, and still as engaging as a clever novel. It is a collection of his work from the past 5 years, timely, pithy and humorous stuff written in Saunder's spare, cunning style.  One can see why his work appears in GQ magazine. He is of the rare type of writer, a journalist. A real investigative journalist, whose prose will show, not tell, whose ideas are colored with his life experience as well as the ironies and dichotomies of whatever issue he is attempting to illuminate.

The first essay is about what it means to have a commercial media which is like a megaphone, out shouting the polite discourse of a culture, a community, any normal venue for humans to connect as they need to do. Another essay follows him through a night on the Texas/Mexico border with a group of armed minutemen. Sound like anything you've ever read? It is a refreshing take on the world we find ourselves in, (forgive the hackneyed phrase) - post 9-11.

Saunders allows that he is a Republican, as in the party.  For this I might forgive him, because his ideas do not mirror the dearth of thoughtfulness contained within the usual discourse coming from that camp.  It's a complicated time, but we need to keep connecting, and someone who paints a good picture is worth my attention.


Now, back to harvesting garlic and coriander seeds.....

Will There Ever Be Interest on Savings Accounts Again?

In the very first entry I posted for this blog, 2 long months ago in July, I noted that my themes would sometimes lean toward the political. Tonight, as I write, on this lovely August evening after a 95 degree day here in the Pacific Northwest, which offers the brief other-worldly feeling of living in a different climate zone, (as in the kinds of places one might save for months to reach on a vacation), with only a tiny bit of irony I am involved with a political cause.

Enter The Working Families Party of Oregon, establishing itself as a political party in Oregon since 2006, and now taking off with high hopes into the 2010 Oregon Voters Pamphlet.

Currently, we are stuck with the 2 parties, democrats and  republicans, from which our National elected officials are comprised, mostly millionaires.  This cannot be separated from the facts of our terrible economic situation at the present. When those who own the gold make the rules, it will follow that the rules will favor those who own the gold.

The Oregon Working Families Party currently must gather 5000  Oregon registered voter's signatures to gain ballot access to publish a platform in the next general election Voter's Pamphlet. The OWFP wishes to foster 'fusion' voting, which means they will publicly endorse a candidate based on working people's issues, and not always run an opposition candidate, thereby elevating the level of accountability while not 'spoiling' the 2 party balance.


The OWFP aspires to become the influencing party to hold the main party candidates to values like living wage jobs, affordable college tuition and health care, funding for schools and the arts and a state owned bank to keep our money working for us.

A state owned bank is not a novel, untried concept.  North Dakota has one.  They are funding community programs, and bolstering state coffers at the same time.  We have reached the time to take back our economic fortunes, have we not?

If your interest has been aroused, please visit :  oregonwfp.org

So, what does this have to do with yoga, love and heaven?  Well, wouldn't it be wonderful (heavenly) to have a bank which paid the saver an interest rate... even 3%, and put dollars into the state coffers to offset our taxes to fund the programs we really want... instead of skimming profits into the CEO's multi- million dollar bonuses? Wouldn't it be love to give all kids great programs? Yoga is about health, integrating all the facets of life.  We cannot hold our practice apart from the suffering of others.

We work hard, and we deserve to share in the wealth of our labors and our savings.

Another world is possible. Breathe and read. :) Namaste~