Raising the Bar

We must stand up and state and fight for what we know and what we believe. Instead we now live in a world where the noisy ones get control of the situation instead of the sane ones.
What if someone complains? Better not rattle the boat, even if you are right. Better be politicallly correct and favor not offending anyone. Live in a bland world? No thanks, bland may not bring on lawsuits but it doesn't make life real or progressive either. What am I refering to? The way science educators will easily give up on using the word "EVOLUTION" because it might offend someone's religious beliefs. They use ADAPTATION instead. REALLY???? If people can't tell the difference between science and faith that is their problem. Science requires zero faith, because faith destroys the ability to prove something. To capitulate to this lowest of common demonators is to weaken our argument that science is needed in order to better understand our world.

Helmets on the Trail

I am all for safety. I am a believer in prevention, but we are going too far. We are preventing kids from some of the most connecting experiences available to them, all in the name of safety or should I say the fear of lawsuits?! Here are just some of the ridiculous rules kids are subject to today: no animals in the classroom, no touching of snakes in nature centers, no climbing on ANYTHING, and no crossing a boardwalk without a lifeguard present. Million dollar payments in lawsuits for non-negligent accidents are largely to blame. When something bad happens we head for the nearest attorney, someone must be blamed and victims compensated, even when it is simply an accident. I let kids play and climb outdoors during the summer camps I teach. One summer a kid even broke an arm and needed stitches in his lip when he fell out of a tree. His mother was great about it. The week before he had broken his thumb during a baseball game. She believed that the alternative was not acceptable: having her child live a sterile, overly protected life.  Frivolous lawsuits lead us to overprotected children who cannot be children anymore. Their natural fearlessness is morphing into a fear of everything outdoors. I see it in students who are never outdoors, every bug and noise is a potential hazard and a trip to the woods is  a reason to experience  a rise in blood pressure. If we do not try to stop this, we are headed for a world in which children might just have to start wearing helmets on the trail, because after all, a tree branch just might fall on their heads.

Teaching Values First

Many have said it before, our priorities are all wrong. We just need to read the news and listen to its message. As a global culture, if you will, we value the wrong things. We sacrifice too much because we ignore and deny our role in this world. Dominant culture teaches that money is all important and that accumulating facts equals education. We teach that material wealth is more important than absorbing an ethical way of living here on earth. In the absence of ethics, our tribal nature becomes a toxic identification which so often leads to violence.

Ethics begins with respect. Respect for all living things and property of others. Respect for what nature is telling us and what science is teaching us. We are great at ignoring the warning signs that our priorities are all wrong.

The other day the dual language Annishinabeg school came to learn about maple syruping at our nature center. These Native American Indian school kids were from a poor neighborhood and it is likely that they also had stressful family situations. But there was something amazing about this group of children. They listened and behaved without constant scolding. The school's teachers had their priorities right. It was obvious that the first thing they taught them was the age-old traditions of their people; to respect one's elders and the natural world. Almost every other class has to be told to treat the museum artifacts with respect. They have to be told not to pound on the exhibit buttons. Not this group. These children, from a disadvantaged place in life, listened patiently for 25 minutes to the introduction. They went outside without needing to be told to listen. They all brought with them a small offering of tobacco leaf which they dropped at the bottom of the maple tree in gratitude for the sugar they were about to extract. We all got to teach and did not have to discipline. That day they taught me much more than I taught them. Did I mention that these students were only 4 and 5 year's old? Maybe they aren't so disadvantaged afterall.

Generosity is Selfish

It is selfish to be generous. We need to get that word out. The world needs so much more generosity and so much less greed. But the myth we live is that generosity hurts and receiving and hoarding our wealth feels good. Why is it selfish to be generous? Because it feels so good to give. It is a much greater feeling to be the giver than the receiver. My parents taught me that. They have perfected generosity. They simply glow with satisfaction everytime they do something nice for someone. They do something nice every day.

When I got old enough to imitate their gestures towards others I discovered they were right. Nothing feels better than to give of yourself. Giving is not always about money. One can be generous with one's time, one's humor or one's possessions. Just ask a lonely person in a nursing home if they would rather have an hour more of your time or a $100 bill.

My parents love giving things they've made themselves. If you are the proud owner of the hundreds of stained glass items my father has made over the years or one of the hundreds of beaded necklaces my mother has patiently crafted, you possess an item filled with the joy of generosity. I am absolutely certain that my parents experienced greater joy than the recipients of those beautiful hand-made gifts. I also believe that the joy of giving lasts longer than the joy of receiving. In a world that seems to breed selfishness and all of the pain it creates, we need spread the word that generosity is selfish.




I

Climate Chaos

Words are important. Silly as that may sound, they carry multiple messages and often unintended baggage. When scientists first noticed that the climate was warming on a global scale due to trapped human-produced gases, they knew that disaster was in the forecast. Polar ice caps were melting thus creating instability in the climate as oceans warm and rise and the jet stream shifts. They called this human caused phenomenon, 'Global Warming'. It's not an inacurate title, but it was a poor choice because it doesn't sound ominous enoug.  If you are living in a cold place, warming sounds pretty good.  Then the powers that be decided they would call in Climate Change. A better but not yet ideal title for such a critical problem. Change is not a bad thing in our language. We need a word that is accurate and alarming. I submit the word CLIMATE CHAOS, because weather patterns get chaotic and our farmers cannot grow food, for instance, in chaotic weather. Human caused climate chaos spurred on but overpopulation and our appetite for burning fossil fuels may just render our planet lifeless. The right title might help to inspire more action than we are now witnessing among leaders who have not been leaders at all on this most frightening issue.

Read the Ingredients

Inside the plastic unrecyclable container lies a bunch of healthy organic strawberries. Organic, gluten free dairy free, high fiber bars wrapped in throw away high glossy wrappers. The Yin and Yang of our times, great products in lousy throw away containers. I am one of those who always reads the ingredients. I avoid: avoid high fructose corn syrup, dairy, and GMO's. I look for organic ingredients with high fiber. But if I hit pay dirt in the ingredient department, I often find myself throwing away the wrapper in the trash. We all know where that ends up, in our limited landfills.

It seems to me that healthy products wrapped in unrecyclable wrapping is symbolic of our times.
We get issues half way. We want a clean evironment and green lawns. We want to reduce our carbon without reducing the number of people producing it. We want the American diet sans the detrimental effects so we take statin drugs to nullify the effects of it. We want delicious fruit but hate bees.

Food can't just be healthy for us it has to be healthy for the planet. Smoking at the back of airplanes is a solution based on only half of the truth. Getting the whole story on any issue is key to long term solutions.

The Power of Story

In an article in National Geographic magazine called KARMA OF THE CROWD ( FEB, 1014) the Kumbh Mela is described.  This is the festival in India where millions of people gather to become spiritually and physically revived. In the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers, is a spot where one can drink and bathe the ‘amrit’ the nectar of eternal life. At the last Kumbh Mela 70 million descended on this sacred spot in a festival that lasted 56 days. In spite of below freezing temperatures at night, unheated tents and the river’s ghastly pollution, the mostly elderly pilgrims report being healthy and invigorated from their experience in the makeshift tent cities.  If a non believing westerner, like myself,  would join in this ritual one could only hope that there was a way to get to an emergency room in time to be pumped full of antibiotics. Their strong centuries-old beliefs in the story of sacred waters obviously transcend the scientific realities of their surroundings.

If we want to make any progress to refocus the world in a more positive direction we need a  more powerful story. We can’t even begin to hope that well-assembled facts alone will do the trick. This story needs to transcend current realities and create a world of possibilities. To keep our planet livable into the future we need a story that is as powerful as magical waters that arise out of a pollution saturated river.

Violence-Free

I challenge my friends and readers to try to have a violence free weekend. By that I mean to try to avoid all images and stories that involve violence. I define violence as hearing or listening to any media ( including rap music ) that reports about or attempts to entertain us with real or fictional stories of assault, rape, war, and murder.  I also define violence as perpetrated by yelling and shouting demeaning epithets at one another. It includes not only the treatment of people but animals too.

I tried to count how many television shows are based on violence even if they show no blood, there were too many to count.

In an effort to live a violent free weekend, one first realizes how nearly impossible this is. We are bombarded with violence in all of our media. It is ubiquitous. Televisions are now in our health clubs and restaurants so while we are working out or eating a meal we don't have to miss seeing bombs exploding and body parts flying. We even entertain ourselves with murder mysteries, how fun to spend our time discovering clues to the identiy of a murderer?

We are consumers of violence. Hollywood gets richer from the way we love to munch on popcorn while watching blood and guts on the big screen. We talk about wanting to live in peace but we are culturally addicted to the adrenalin rush we get from watching car chases and hit men getting their mark.

We become desensitized to violence and justify its existence because it tells a good or even true story about the way we live.

If we want to live in a better world, if we want to have more dreams fufilled and less nightmares realized, we must begin to detach ourselves from our violence saturated lives.

Brave Solutions

Brave solutions is a concept about going to the source of problems and solving them right there. It's harder, its often grimy and exhausting work but it's the only way to solve anything. There are many metaphors which express this idea. In the culture that is America today, we would rather have a lung transplant rather than stop smoking. We keep watering badly planted trees. We know what that does, it gives us something to do, but the roots will never take. We have to replant the tree. We have to do what it takes to make things right. Give up old ideas, embrace new ones with hope for a better long term result planted in between. The Earth cannot keep coming in last, behind emergencies which are caused by the way we keep forgetting how everything depends on a healthy biosphere.
We don't have any more Earth's  to mine and our numbers are rapidly exhausting our resources. No solutions will stick, no other problems will matter when our numbers keep rising by 1,000,000 every 4.5 days. "Stop at One" is the controversial slogan for limiting family size, which offers hope for a world with us. I believe if people realized our truly desperate situation, that slogan would be on buses and billboards everywhere.


Brave Solutions
by Karen I. Shragg

We are watering badly planted trees
Solving problems with blinders on
Wondering why they never go away
and keep getting worse
We want quick fixes
Electric cars that cool the climate
Cheap food that makes us healthy
Diets that allow for greasy buffets
Money to pour in from winning tickets
Intelligence to emerge from our devices
We want room for polar bears
and our wall street ways
We want to keep ignoring the cliff approaching
with every moment we ignore
how billions of us drive scarcity
keeping prices high
to drive the kind of mining we abhor

We pray for miracles 

Assuming the answers do not lie within us
and our ability to replant the trees
In places where there is room for healthy roots to grow
in the fertile ground of hope
and brave solutions.

AUNTHOOD

The relationship which seems least defined in our society is that of being an aunt. It has almost no boundaries or expectations. There is no holiday for the role of loving your brother and sister's kids, yet it is my favorite role to explore from a position of wonder and amazement. This year my youngest niece will graduate high school with many honors I'm sure, and my oldest niece will graduate from dental school. I couldn't be more proud, yet their accomplishments don't define my pride, its just simply and profoundly being their aunt that gives me joy. From the moment they were all born I just fell deeply in love with them and just love hearing about the way they are all navigating the world, each on a different journey which is as it should be. I am still connected to the nieces of my first husband, although I haven't seen them since they were little, I find myself staring at photos of them and their families on FaceBook, getting tremendous joy out of knowing they are doing well in the world. I fell in love with my (now) husband's nephew and twin nieces from the moment I met them too.
Making them all laugh, often at me, is one of my favorite things to do. The role of being an aunt is best worn, I think, as a non-judgemental cape of solid support and love. I hope I wear it well.

Why I Don't Give in to Despair

I gave into despair once, it didn't work. It didn't change the world, it just made those around me confused and sad. Many ask me how I can continue to work on the overpopulation issue and not succumb to despair while surrounded by statistics of such overwhelming misery? I have been writing a book on this issue for four years and speaking on it for many more. I read stacks of books and articles about our billions and how we are sucking the life giving resources out of the planet while polluting it on the side.

The answer is that people in despair are not able to be articulate and be a voice for a planet under seige. I think it is very gratifying to be one of a handful of folks trying to point out where our efforts should be focused, on reducing US.. It is easier to work on a difficult issue than it is to fool oneself that any 'downstream' act will matter in the long run.

Better to figure out WHY the babies are being thrown in the river than to keep pulling them out expecting that to be the ultimate solution. It does break my heart to see so many wildlife species hurting because of our numbers and our habits of using their habitats as our toilets. But a broken heart is not a position of strength or effectiveness and while we may never win, giving up is a loser's game.

Embracing Winter

Winter is not my favorite season, I prefer spring and summer because I love being outdoors and even if
you ski and snowshoe as I do you can only do them for a few hours at best. That being said I no longer want to dread it and use it as a gift. A gift of time to order my life, read those books that accumulate, write the books that await the kind of time only winter provides. Winter curbs my errands and gives me more time at home. I catch up on movies that I won't see when the weather is pleasant and worthy of more rewarding experiences. I have learned how to play cribbage and how much I like to cross country ski, snow shoe and meet friends for a warm meal. Somehow winter gives me the gift of grit and integrity 70 and sunny does not. You never say, "I made it through summer.. you say "I survived winter and somehow that is something remarkable. I hope the integrity of this post isn't spoiled by the tickets I just purchased for California. I get out of this fricking icebox in 2 weeks!!!!!!!!

Discipline

This time of year we think about discipline when we really need to think about our habits.No one needs to be told brush their teeth it just feels good when you brush your teeth and feels bad when you don't. So we all need to try to get into a place where we create beneficial habits. Discipline doesn't work long term because you are still seeing the thing you are trying to avoid as pleasurable.For example: If you see a donut as poison to your body it takes no discipline to avoid it . Yoga feels good and heals,to practice daily is a gift you give yourself not a discipline. Fast food is not food but a body and planet damaging corporate invention. Avoiding that becomes easy when you demonize those things which are harmful to you and the planet.