Chatting With Dennis Kucinich in Tacoma

I had heard for years that Dennis Kucinich is an especially charismatic person, so to see him in person was the chance that came along this week, and thanks to Trina Ballard and facebook, we hooked up to make the trip from Bellevue  to attend a small fundraiser at the IBEW Union Hall in Tacoma. After tonight I can picture Dennis in real life, and still feel his sincere handshake given with a warm smile. I can hear his voice, intelligent and clear, his morals not in compromise, no cognitive dissonance in his conversation.

Dennis has to raise money to run again, to preserve his Congressional seat in Ohio. Ah, the whole election process in this country is so daunting, as we supporters put our 40.00 or so into the envelope, I was thinking of the billionaire Koch bros who fund the people who will serve their interests. So now in America if you are a person of conscience, you will never have the kind of funding as a sell out. I guess this has always been true, and I am having to see it in all it's horror.

Last Friday evening, Dennis answered questions for 45 minutes, and then walked around the room. Trina and I were able to speak with him personally for a few minutes. The issue of Bradley Manning was raised earlier, and he told us the crazy story of how he has tried visit Manning. He contacted the Sec. of the Army, who told him to contact the State Dept, who told him to contact the Sec. of the Navy, who told him to contact Manning's lawyer, then he was told he needed Manning's permission, which he got. Well, then he was cleared by the prison in Quantico, Virginia to visit, and informed that if he visited it would be taped, and that he could be called as a witness in the trial. Sounds like blackmail to me.
Dennis is on the Congressional Oversight Committee, to further the injustice of this scenario.
For the past 8+ months Manning has not been allowed to exercise 23 hours a day, including in his cell, not allowed normal clothes, and is kept in isolation.
"They are trying to break him." Said Dennis.
Contrast this with the 5 soldiers being held in prison at Fort Lewis for murdering Iraqi civilians unprovoked, and dismembering the bodies. One of these soldiers was just allowed to return to his home with a minimum security monitor.
There you have it, the priorities in the U.S.: it is far worse to share state secrets of illegal war operations than it is to murder people.

The issues raised were so numerous, and daunting. For instance that are 15 million unemployed in the U.S. now. Millions have stopped even filing for unemployment, so the official figures are not close to the reality of our social situation.
Our tax dollars are going to fund and insure Nuclear Power plants because there is no private agency or insurance company who would dare invest in something as unsustainable and risky.

Kucinich's district in Ohio is being redrawn, because of the huge population loss occurring in Ohio in recent years. Now he may have to run in an entirely new district.
Even with all of this, he tells us there is reason to keep working. From a practicing Buddhist I will take this home with me as a mantra in troubled times.
He is a lone voice of truth in a sea of confusion. If you have a chance to ever see him, and put a few dollars in the envelope, it might assuage that distant fear that there are no high quality leaders in our midst. Dennis is the real thing.

Washing the Floor and Hoeing the Garlic

Today cosmic circumstance gave me the opportunity to spend the morning washing my kitchen floor. It is the kind of clean that you can feel with bare feet. I did not have to hurry while I washed, I just washed with no thought of time. My space feels happier now in a general way.
The weather turned finally toward spring, the bite of cold receded by the afternoon when I walked down to my neighbor's garlic field where I am helping in the work. My efforts are part of a trade for fresh vegetables. We hoe and chat or sometimes I am alone and I think. Hoeing and thinking is a natural combination. I feel connected to the many ancestors through the ages who worked their fields for survival.
The light has come to gloaming, the cats walk in front of the windows, maybe waiting for the moon to rise. The blossoms on the plum trees and the daffodils glow in this light. Another luxury, to stare out the window. The sky is several hues of dark blue.
It is quiet except for the evening birds chirping. It is quiet enough for a mind to drift, to float unhurried, agenda free. It is quiet enough to hear the sound waves left by the voices of those long dead, who seem to have a hand in why I am here, in this farmland, on this hill, with the sense of closeness to something I walk toward in my dreams.

High School P.E. Yoga

Last week my work took me out to the small high school in St. Paul. A rural school set in the midst of the fertile agricultural lands of the mid-Willamette Valley.  The landscape is flat as a pancake, and a patchwork of orchards, hop fields, nurseries, afalfa, strawberries and the people who work and harvest these crops.

My assignment was 2 mornings as the middle school P.E. teacher. P.E. was never my favorite gig, as my field is English Ed., but after taking roll, when the class was supposed to spend 5 minutes on warm-ups, my mouth suddenly opened to say "I'm a yoga teacher, and anyone who wants to do yoga stretches instead of laps come over here to this corner."
Substitute teaching is very much improv, and here I was winging it... not sure what would occur, given the large class including a number of boisterous 12 and 13 year old boys.
At the mention of the word 'yoga' several of the girl's eyes lit up, they smiled and I could hear a small chorus of "All right! I LOVE yoga. Oh this is so cool!"
As I began I was thinking, "OK I hope this isn't crazy!"
Fully half the class came into my corner... even a few boys showed up, and almost all of the girls. Most were watching me intently as I quickly scanned my brain for anything we could do with shoes on, no mats, and me having to have one eye out on the rest of the class, none of whose names or behaviors I knew yet.

We did a few stretches and combinations of tree pose balances. The kids were fabulous and sweet. The usual adolescent "everything is stupid" attitude was not on display. What a small joy. No, not small, it was a revelation. One of the biggest obstacles in education is that ennui against enthusiasm. This very thing has kept me from wanting to be in large classrooms. Today, however, I saw a glimmer of what could be.
One girl, Rachel, the angel of my day, (there is usually one) came up after class, looked me straight in the eye and said, "Thank you for teaching us yoga today." My heart melted. That is what I took home with me, after 4 hours of listening to basketballs and shouts reverberate inside gym walls, and the constant supervision of packs of wild, unconscious boys. (I later learned that some of them had urinated into the soap dispensers in the boys locker room.)
It was a 2 morning gig, and on the following day the principal joined me for the last class. The activity of the day was weightlifting. There wasn't a good venue for yoga stretches, and it felt harder to fit them in, so I accepted the routine. One of the comments the principal made after class, a wonderful teacher by the way, was that kids this age are very 'body unaware'. So true, and true for many adults too.

I can't help thinking how wonderful it would be to offer yoga to school kids, to give them early opportunities to learn focus through body awareness. There are some schools who offer yoga, and I hope it will become a trend. It could be part of the evolutionary change we need to make to continue our survival as this complicated species with a the big brain which often isn't our best quality.

Working with middle school age kids is giving me hope, actually. I believe they will find new holistic ways to see the world and to live. They will have to, and maybe on some level most know this, even if popular culture tells us otherwise.

Applesauce Carrot Cake

Here is a cake recipe, in honor of my Arlyn, for  whom I waited 3 weeks past his due date, finally the pangs of labor beginning 33 years ago today. I can still see the green trees and the grass warm from spring sunshine in the clearing near our cabin where I passed the first hours of labor. You know, the ones where you think, oh, this isn't going to be so bad...
He finally joined us on the outisde at 3 am on April 10.
Today I made a birthday cake for our birthday lunch tomorrow. It turned out so well, I have to share it:

Applesauce Carrot Cake

2 c hot applesauce (homemade gravenstein canned last summer is lovely!)
1 1/2 c organic cane sugar
1/2 c brown sugar
2 farm fresh eggs
1 c shredded carrots
3/4 c veg oil
2 teas allspice
2 teas cinnamon
1 teas nutmeg
1/2 teas salt
1 1/2 teas baking soda
1/2 teas baking pwder
2 c. unbleached white flour (preferably Bob's Redmill)
1/2 c. whole wheat flour        "
1 c. chopped walnuts         

Heat the applesauce in microwave for 2 min. Blend eggs, sugars, and oil together. Mix in applesauce and carrots., blend again. Add dry ingredients, blend to consistency for cake batter, adding flour or applesauce as needed for consistency. Bake at 350 for  40 minutes in cake pans.
Muy rico, very rich.
Frost if desired... buttercream or cream cheese frosting.  Decorate with your baby's name, or whoever the cake is for.
Birthdays remind me of how lucky I am to have so many people to love in my life. spending time making a real cake with first rate ingredients is my way of going to the place of gratitude.

April is the Cruelest Month....

April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
                       T.S. Eliot, "The Wasteland"


Spring here, so heart breakingly green.
...the tiny pink flowers in the woods, and trillium.
I pick fresh nettles to have them for lunch
they give me strength for more garden work.
The squall comes in at 5, sending me back inside
by the fire.

10 years ago, we thought it should be warm,
My Mom and I,
leaving on the train for the east,
 but no.
The plains were mud and sleet, 
The Mississippi flooding our bridge
The snow
had barely melted in New York.

Eliot wrote of wars, the irony of new life upon the dull
land..
And I know, even in the heart hopes are too sharply bright
for the eyes, like wet spring green grass against the shifting sky

April is the cruelest month, only because of crocuses and cherry trees
Do they they know of their audaciousness?
I think not, as the white blossoms litter the muddy road
And we watch the rain for isotopes
We cannot see.

Bittercress as a Model for Survival

     Bittercress is the springtime weed which defies all efforts against it. As I pull hundreds from my yard and garden every year, I feel a relationship with this tenacious plant. I feel it telling me what it knows. It knows how to survive cold, lack of water, heat, bad soil, other agressive plants, being ripped up, being smashed, it seems almost indestructable. The only way to make certain it is stopped is to compost it before it goes to seed, or burn it.

As a metaphor for life, here is what I can learn from bittercress:

It begins growing in the winter, so it can flower as soon as the sun warms..... :)
It knows to hide between other similar plants, wrapping it's roots in such a way as to create more security against being extracted.
It's roots are like elastic, they grip the soil for dear life.
If uprooted, it has reserves in it's stems and roots which allow it to attach into concrete if necessary, seeking out any iota of water or soil to sustain any small part of it's ability to produce seeds.
It produces seed which flies out from the plant stem like trajectories when the plant is barely touched. 
It grows small and tough when conditions are harsh, and big and bushy when conditions are ideal.
It doesn't care if it is not liked.