by: Dave Belden on September 5th, 2009 | Comments Off
Here’s a fascinating article in The Sun about science and technology that imitates nature (only part of it is available online – they want you to buy their magazine so it stays alive – I know the feeling). If you have a design problem of any kind you can go to askNature.org and find out how nature does it. Nature has developed much more subtle and clever ways than our brute methods:
For the most part life operates on very small amounts of energy. When you look at the natural world, you see that organisms do not use high heats or high pressures or toxic chemicals to achieve their ends. A few do use toxins, such as venoms, in small amounts, but none heat anything with explosive force. Biomimicry asks whether we can accomplish our goals without heating things up and smashing them together. Can we start to appreciate the subtle energies around us?
Janine Benyus, author and founder of asknature.org, says something I been wondering about. I have always loved reading about giant technical fixes. Oil running out? No problem, if only we can get nuclear fusion (unlimited energy without radiation and toxic waste), or finally crack artificial photosynthesis (pull CO2 out of the air, mix it with water and sunshine, create carbon and oxygen!), all energy problems are over. Lately, I have been thinking that a breakthrough of that kind might just let us run amok creating things without end, and we might solve global warming at the expense of ruining the biosphere in so many other ways. How much better to reduce fossil fuel use by a plethora of tough choices, so we learn to fit in with natural systems instead of blowing them away with our power. Benyus nails it:
I think fossil fuels were discovered before our consciousness had evolved enough to know what to do with all that energy.
On my desk at Tikkun I have a photo of three girls, two boys and me, and the van I used to drive them and my son to school in every day in the Hudson Valley, an hour’s trip. I miss those kids and the wonderful thing that happens to a parent on the school run when you become invisible and they just talk their usual talk with each other. These were such decent and enjoyable young people, it was the thing that kept me going to my not so perfect job near their school. One of them, Eliza Reynolds, just graduated and her mother, Sil, sent me a link to an article they wrote together in Feministing. Here’s Sil’s take, and to get Eliza’s, go visit Feministing, which is well worth checking out:
1. Find a village to raise your child. Take Hilary Clinton’s advice to heart and find village women and men to help you raise your child in a loving and supportive community. You cannot do everything or be everywhere – create that circle for her and for you.
2. Love your body. Then your daughter will be inspired to cherish her own unique feminine body. Teach about what is wrong about those too skinny images that are coming at her every day.
3. While I am on the subject–keep no scales in the house. A number in the morning should not have the right to determine how one feels about oneself.
4. Celebrate the sacred, invite it in, and make room for it in your home. Celebrate your daughter’s menarche even if she resists it. It may be just the two of you (red tulips and strawberries), or a circle of women that hold her.
5. Plant a garden with her if you can find a patch of earth. This will teach her the rhythms of the Earth, the cycles of life and the miracle of starting life from a seed.
6. Teach tolerance and celebrate differences: different bodies, different sexual orientations, different cultures and different points of view. Teach about injustice. Model compassion.
7. Keep talking. Always keep the lines of communication open. If you are having trouble with this, get help.
8. Bring your daughter to your workplace. If you don’t work, bring your daughter to your volunteer place. Make sure she sees you in the world.
Zella and Helga are best friends, middle-aged women, traveling together, talking about children and grandchildren, very normal. But some have difficulty accepting their friendship. Zella Brown is daughter of Holocaust survivors Wolf and Barbara Kaplansky. Seventy five members of her family died… Helga’s father was a Gestapo chief responsible for the deaths of 40,000 people.
I asked my old friend Michael Henderson to send me a true story from his latest book, No Enemy To Conquer: Forgiveness in an Unforgiving World. I had no idea he would have one so central to Tikkun‘s mission. This is a shortened version of the one that appears in the book.
I simply could not resist posting this photo of a woman we met at the San Francisco City Hall health care reform rally. Her button, combined with her winning smile, were priceless.
Adding dental care to health care reform…… may be a good idea!
As we head into this weekend and await President Obama’s speech to a joint session of Congress this coming Wednesday, the “tea-partiers” will be out spreading lies and fear. I’ve been trying to tackle those lies by sharing stories about my father’s VA health care.
On Tuesday, the day before the rally, I took my father to the VA clinic to see his primary care doctor. She, as always, was wonderful. We walked into the clinic 15 minutes before our appointment, went straight into the nurse’s station where the nurse took my father’s vitals, and then a few minutes later we were with the doctor. She pulled Dad’s records up on her computer, updated all his prescriptions, and then saw that she hadn’t done certain blood tests lately so she clicked, and ordered the tests. She spent about a half hour with us, talking to my father and examining him. She had one concern about my father’s leg so she ordered a sonogram. I’ll get the appointment in the mail in the next few days (it is not urgent). We turned right as we left her office and went straight over to the lab and got the blood tests she had ordered. When I got home, a bunch of my father’s prescription refills were waiting in my mailbox.
Government health care at its very finest. I am so grateful.
So….. we need to fight truth decay as our model petitioner makes so clear, and just to have a bit of fun with that, let’s see how Mark Fiore, the brilliant cartoonist, views the current debate over health care. Enjoy and have a wonderful Labor Day weekend!
Thursday Night is Health Care Change Night at ePluribus Media and Daily Kos. This week, new diarist evelette posted a lyrical account of her own reckoning with death in her diary, (linked above) When Health Care Works.
When evelette learned she was suffering from cancer, she was given three choices:
Undergo a single mastectomy with or without reconstruction;
Undergo a double mastectomy with or without reconstruction;
Do nothing and hope for the best.
Fortunately, thanks to state subsidized health coverage in New Mexico (partially socialized medicine), evelette was able to make the right choice for her. Her decision has deepened her already strong relationship with her boyfriend, and also with her friends and co-workers, and brought new joy into her life. You can find out how that happened by reading her diary.
On streetprophets, diarist ramara (who is also a cancer survivor) reflected on her joy at playing Beethoven’s eroica a year after her kidney was removed. She wrote a D’Var Torah about “First Fruits” as her offering of Thanks. The D’Var Torah blossomed into a weekly series. To celebrate the return of “First Fruits,” she reposted her diary last night.
I hope these diaries inspire a joyous and fruitful Labor Day Weekend.
This week at streetprophets, a spiritually directed sister-blog to Daily Kos, Navy Vet Terp has posted the weekly D’Var Torah on tomorrow’s parsha, First Fruits.
Navy Vet Terp excerpts the commandment regarding the bringing of the first fruits into Jerusalem. The Lord commands us to make pilgrimage together (sort of like holding a rally), bringing our first fruits in baskets to give to the Lord. We recite statements about our father who was a wandering Aramean, and remind ourselves to remember that we were once slaves in Egypt. Rich and poor travel side by side, their offerings equally pleasing in the eyes of G-d.
Navy Vet Terp helps us to understand the parsha by quoting the Mishnah, Bikkurim, Chapter Three, which describes the procession of the first fruits in the loveliest of terms. S/he then reflects on the life of Senator Kennedy. Born into great privilege and wealth, the Senator began his life walking the same sort of path as a certain former president. He partied and womanized and indulged his appetites. But then, when tragedy struck as a result of his heedlessness, he reconsidered, devoting the remainder of his life to improving the lot of the least among us.
Navy Vet Terp quotes a passage from a letter that Senator Kennedy wrote to the Pope…a letter about the meaning of faith. S/he concludes that the purpose of the pilgrimage of first fruits is to remind the wealthy that their wealth is a gift for the benefit of all; to re-introduce humility in their lives.
Ted Kennedy represents the best of this tradition.
Please check out Navy Vet Terp’s diary and leave a comment! Consider it a first fruit offering.
by: Dave Belden on September 3rd, 2009 | Comments Off
Armen Kassabian in action in the Dominican Republic. Armen wrote about using mindfulness meditation as an alternative to Ritalin.
We advertised an Under 25 youth writing contest on the back cover of our May/June 2009 issue and had no idea what quality of writing we would receive. We were blown away by quality of the essays. It was pretty much impossible to select the five we promised to put in the print edition, since there was little to choose between the top entries. We had over 40 entries altogether. We promised free subscriptions to the top twenty.
The ones in print are linked to below, plus the rest of our top picks. It was striking to us how well the writers wove their personal experiences into their understanding of a social, political, or theological issue.
We hope to do this again, so keep an eye out for future contests. Meanwhile, stay connected to us through Twitter or Facebook here, and we hope you’ll read this blog and leave comments.
Elisabeth MacAulay Given (with her friends Kali and Galaxy) wrote about campaigning in language that people can hear
Our Top Twelve
Social, Political Topics
The most popular theme was Israel/Palestine, and liberal American Jews discovering or learning to work with the Other (and not only with Palestinians or other Arabs, since the Other in one case was a conservative Israeli settler). See the essays by Rachel Berkowitz, Samantha Kirby, Noah Hertz-Bunzl, Shira Rachel Danan, and Laura Duane.
Josh Kaminski wrote about being jobless in a small Michigan town, and promoting the local as opposed to the mega-corporate economy.
Armen Kassabian‘s experience of using mindfulness meditation as an alternative to Ritalin shows that we could radically change the way we approach ADHD in ourselves and our children.
Applying Our Knowledge: Inter-Religious Study for Purposeful Action by Joshua M. Z. Stanton.
Hope From The Ashes by Maia Smith tells of the efforts she has participated in to bring a ruined Hawaian island back.
This fall I’ll be teaching “Cakes for the Queen of Heaven” again. Shirley Ranck wrote this groundbreaking curriculum about women in Western religion in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but it was first published in 1986. The fact that it took the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) at least five years to put it out says a lot about this pioneering course.
The UUA is notoriously liberal, even progressive. But this class pushed the buttons of Unitarian Universalist’s still largely male hierarchy, and they delayed publication. Why? Maybe because it offered consciousness raising within a religious context. Maybe because it included some controversial research. Maybe because those patriarchs could see its long-term consequences: More women embracing the Goddesses in their lives.
It certainly had all of those effects. In fact, the consciousness of UU women — already empowered by political feminism — became raised even further by contact with spiritual feminism. And although the curriculum contained references to the controversial archeologist Marija Gimbutas, that didn’t stop UU women from pouring into Wicca, welcoming both its deities and its ritual. In fact, UU women made Wicca one of the fastest, if not the fastest-growing religion in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
With the help of the UU Women and Religion Committee, Ranck updated and re-issued “Cakes for the Queen of Heaven” last year. It’s still a wonderful course. And it still empowers women in ways that political feminism can’t. Where else would a teacher request that women sketch themselves nude and then talk about how this experience helped them to understand their concerns with body image? Where else would women talk about how patriarchal mothering antagonizes mothers and daughters in a divide-and-conquer strategy that has supported male domination? And where else would women learn about the history of masculine Gods displacing Goddesses?
Lousy quality photo but Peter Gabel is a great speaker and this captures him in action
Peter Gabel’s article “A Labor Leader Loses His Way” on current conflicts in the labor movement is one my favorites among all the articles I have been involved with at Tikkun since arriving in early 2007. I was working up to writing a kick-ass post about it hoping to get people to go to it and not be put off by the amount of labor history in it (if you don’t think you are interested in labor history skip to the heading Choices the Leaders Could Have Made), when someone left a comment heavily criticizing the article and saying it looked like Tikkun had lost its way. I got carried way beyond the 3000 character limit in writing a comment in reply, so decided to put my whole comment here as it says some (!) of what I wanted to say here anyway.
Two key quotes, first, to give you a flavor of the article. Gabel writes,
I am now sixty-two years old and have been involved in social and political activism for my entire adult life, and not once have I been involved with a progressive movement or project that did not undermine itself and, in many cases, destroy itself by succumbing to the ghost of its own internalized humiliation, the legacy of the under-confirmation that every one of us suffers from as a result of being shaped within a social world in which we have been trained to doubt the lasting presence of the other as a reciprocating carrier of love, acceptance, and recognition.
Is there a solution?
… those who want to transform the world have hardly begun to practice the kind of ongoing spiritual reassurance needed to consciously monitor and very gradually heal the same wounds that the preservers of the status quo seek to keep in a state of unconscious repression.
The solution is that we have to develop the “psycho-social healing processes” that can enable us to work better together in solidarity and love. This is what a good few of my own posts here have been about recently: here, here and here.
Please check out this diary by Connecticut Man1 at ePluribus Media, a great site for original collaborative citizen journalism.
Connecticut Man1′s friend, Matt Black of Shoq Value, took his video camera up to Canada and interviewed real Canadians about their health care system. Though Matt tried to find people with horror stories to report, everyone seemed beyond satisfied. Nobody talked about long lines or rationed care. Everyone interviewed chose their own doctor.
But the best part was their collective response to a question about co-pays.
Connecticut Man1 also presents a terrific graphic juxtaposing the American “mainstream” opposing the public option (22%) against “the left of the left” (72%) who clamor for one.
Connecticut Man1′s diary is a perfect complement to Craig Weisner’s Tikkun article below. Please read both over coffee and wonder how it has become possible for the average American to be completely inundated by misinformation.
One would almost think we have resurrected Pravda.
“I came here because I have health issues and I want other kids, ones that aren’t as lucky as me, to have access to health care.”
We had asked his mother why they had come to San Francisco City Hall today and she pointed at the kids and said “Ask them.” Her older son, munching on the addictive kettle corn on sale at the City Hall Farmer’s market quipped “I was hungry” and then her younger son had talked about his health issues and why he worried about other kids not as lucky as him.
“Health issues” Mom piped in, “He had brain surgery, spent two months in Children’s Hospital, the bills were staggering even though we had insurance…. my husband had lost his job, and we got sent to collections. And now for the rest of my son’s life he’s got a pre-existing condition that will make it hard for him to get health insurance.”
Suzie, Ben, Toby and Harry had driven all the way from Sebastopol to be at San Francisco City Hall for the giant health care rally. Thousands of people had gathered on September 2nd to tell President Obama and Congress that they wanted real health care reform and they wanted it now.
Suzie and her kids had a simple message for President Obama, “Don’t Back Down!”
A mature student at the University of Missouri (MU) sent us two poems that I liked, but couldn’t fit into what we were calling our “college issue”–the current issue of Tikkun that is being promoted in over 600 college bookstores. So I have posted them on our poetry site, here.
Of his two poems, ‘Dreaming of Peace, Taking Notes’ and ‘A Prayer,’ Brad Jacobson writes: “Both of these poems are inspired by my experiences in Israel. The first poem is built around being in a tailor shop in the Old City of Jerusalem. The second poem is about my jog along the beach in Jaffa.”
One particular Rwandan genocide victim’s story rendered Alice Walker, peerless writer of human experience, speechless. Visiting Gaza this year after the invasion, she struggled to speak again about atrocity. In print for the first time, her stories of Rwanda and Gaza.
Has Obama abandoned you and his own vision of a caring society?
Or does he need us to be much more forceful in pushing for it? Have WE let him down by expecting him to save us? Read Michael Lerner’s editorial.
On Bookstalls this week! Or buy a single copy here or subscribe here. Only a few articles (linked here) are made available online, until the next issue comes out, when all are posted. We depend financially (for running this blog as much as everything else our staff does) on selling copies, on donations and on memberships in the Network of Spiritual Progressives (join and you get a free sub for the print magazine).
The September/October Tikkun is being promoted in over 600 college bookstores, and we have packed it (as usual!) with challenge and interest for students and faculty, including:
Green Living in Practice and Why Can’t Live Without It
Are synthetic foods making us sick? Is global warming challenging our entire civilization? Yes to both. But is academic freedom being misused to hobble our response to the crisis? Special Section on the Environment by Graeme Taylor, Conrad Miller, Chet Bowers, David Loy and Courtney Rosser.
The Trial of Israel’s Campus Critics
Academic freedom is under fierce attack by extremist pro-Israelis who are trying to shut down voices critical of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians. But freedom to hear and discuss both sides is nowhere needed more than on this issue. By David Theo Goldberg and Saree Makdisi.
How Jail Can Change Lives For The Better
…when a restorative justice program enables the most violent learn how to give up violence and become community creators. Sunny Schwartz’s story is one of the most hopeful ever told in Tikkun. Ronnie Earle, the Texan DA who filed charges against House Majority Leader Tom Delay should be even more famous for the related work he promoted.
Perhaps disappointed that death panels failed to frighten the tar and feathers out of the average American, the right wing appears to have settled on a new meme to undercut healthcare reform: the CDC will force males to undergo circumcision.
Loosely based on a CDC report to be presented at an AIDS prevention gathering in Atlanta, Fox News,Reason Online, and The Drudge Report report that the CDC is considering forced circumcision of all males to prevent the spread of HIV.
David Harsanyi, a Denver Post columnist and author of Nanny State wrote:
“Advertising can be seen as a trope. Its multiple metaphors can sell you ecstasy, joy, something else besides the actual product.” –Beverly Naidus
Click on the picture to explore Beverly Naidus' series "What Kinda Name Is That?"
The work of artist Beverly Naidus takes many forms. She is an accomplished site-specific installation artist and painter. But it is her work in a medium referred to as “culture-jamming” that has brought her to our attention at Tikkun. Editor’s Note: to see more of Naidus’ work, visit Tikkun Daily’s art gallery, which is currently featuring Naidus’ series “What Kinda Name Is That?”
In Naidus’ words, “Culture Jamming is an aesthetic which transforms an image from popular culture, in this case an advertisement, so that it breaks the trance of the image; acts as an antidote to that trope.”
A trope is something akin to a metaphor. In Naidus’ view that is advertising’s essential nature. An advertisement is a thing that means another thing.
In her series “What kind of name is that?” Naidus manipulates mid-20th Century advertising imagery by photo-altering the images then adding original text from a narrative she created from her own experience as the progeny of immigrants.
“One of the things that interested me in particular about the images in these advertisements was that they weren’t only about a particular product that a consumer might wish to purchase. They had to do with what being an American is.
by: Peter Marmorek on September 1st, 2009 | Comments Off
Each week I swing across the web sifting it for material for Tikkunista!, my weekly newsletter. This involves scanning about 20 newspapers, and 40 political magazines/blogs, about half focused on issues in the Middle East. One of my goals in the Tikkun Daily Blog is to highlight some of the most interesting ideas I find, and for me the logical place to start is Mondoweiss. Philip Weiss’ site is “devoted to covering American foreign policy in the Middle East, chiefly from a progressive Jewish perspective,” and I often hear perspectives and gain insights there that I don’t elsewhere. There’s been several clashes over the years between Mondoweiss and Tikkun, (I’m not going there!) but as the Talmud teaches us, “The dispute of scholars increases wisdom.”
A current piece that seems very much worth thinking about is by Jordan Halewi (a pseudonym) who responded to Phil’s concern that his site was getting too exclusively critical and not offering enough creative alternatives. Jordan takes on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict from the fascinating perspective that the core of the problem is our deification of the nation state, which he calls “the vestigial remnant of an outdated Western European construct, forged in the aftermath of bloody medieval Christian wars, then exported by force to regions, and imposed on peoples, for whom the concept was totally contrived.” Instead he looks at the Ottoman Empire, which ruled the Middle East prior to World War One through the millet system, in which ethnic/religious groups had their own cultural and legal rules, and paid tribute to the imperial system.
Japanese Prime Minister Ichirō Hatoyama (in office 1954-56), with his two grandsons, the future Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama (center) and his brother Kunio Hatoyama.
If I were to interpret the world through an American lens, I might think that Japan is right now having an Obama moment. Reuters reports: “For the next prime minister of Japan, it’s all about love and fraternity.”
Our responsibility as politicians is to refocus our attention on those non-economic values that have been thrown aside by the march of globalism. We must work on policies that regenerate the ties that bring people together, that take greater account of nature and the environment, that rebuild welfare and medical systems, that provide better education and child-rearing support, and that address wealth disparities.
His syndicated article is highly critical of “American-style free-market economics.” And then, the NY Times reports:
Mr. Hatoyama, however, seemed to back away from his tough language a day after his victory at the polls.
Zella and Helga are best friends, middle-aged women, traveling together, talking about children and grandchildren, very normal. But some have difficulty accepting their friendship. Zella Brown is daughter of Holocaust survivors Wolf and Barbara Kaplansky. Seventy five members of her family died… Helga’s father was a Gestapo chief responsible for the deaths of 40,000 people.
