Chop Vegetables, Eat, Meditate, Walk, Sleep...

I have knelt at her feet more times than I can recount; more than a dozen times, she touched me with her peacock feathers after I’d stood for hours in endless lines of like-minded pilgrims; I walked beside her; she laughed at my little jokes; told me to pursue my art as my service to her; and she counseled me in ways that helped me heal and grow immensely. There are at least two times I know of she probably pulled me back from dying. She was one of my most beloved teachers, and I would not be who I am today without having known her.

“She” is the Guru of the “pray” part of Eat, Pray, Love, the first-person account of Liz Gilbert, who was given a year’s worth of money to recover from a divorce and write about it, now a major motion picture starting Julia Roberts, a person far more suited to playing the Guru herself because of her own vast experience in dealing with people "stalking movie stars." "She" would use the term "meditate," not the term "pray." And thousands upon thousands know this 55-year-old woman as their beloved “Gurumayi.” Born Malti Shetty in Mumbai on June 24, 1955, she grew up to become Swami Chidvilasananda, on her visa a “meditation teacher.” Which is a little like calling Michelangelo a “church painter.” I first met her when she was a translator for Muktananda in the mid-70s, and then again in the mid-80s, when she had become the sole leader of Siddha Yoga world-wide.

I have no intention of telling 'secrets' about Siddha Yoga. The internet is full of stuff, if you are of a mind to 'expose' the Guru. Have fun. If that is who you are. If that is how you want to spend your time. But I think it’s a better idea to figure out how to connect with the infinite, sacred energy of the universe. Because we have so little time here, you know? And I have no intention of advising that you go to her Ashrams in upstate New York or India, looking for Swami Chidvilasanda. Honest, there are places to get quality spiritual guidance much nearer at hand. And she doesn't need the aggravation. Oh, maybe Suze Orman or Felicia Rashad wouldn't be sitting on the next asana, but for my money, your cat is a perfectly serviceable Guru, and your apartment a good ashram, if you are on the right path.

Don't misunderstand. I am perfectly happy that people go off to “find themselves.” (If they find me, I'd be happy if they'd send me home.) But there is something very “Siddha Yoga” about this whole best-seller book/movie deal. What an amazing world it would be if the Patanjali Yoga Sutras hit the NY Times best seller list. Or Charlotte Joko Beck’s Everyday Zen. And I for one would love to see Khrisnamurti's life made into a major motion picture. I think, in the end, the Siddha Yoga people in general are not looking for “God,” but for a way to construct their lives from a narrow bandwidth of human experience so they feel as though they have gained some control and know exactly what they need to do (buy the right chanting tapes, saris, meditation pillows, go to India, the Catskills, attend the right number of classes, hang the appropriate number of photographs of Guru in your home, get the “Enlightenment” diploma). It’s the same thing that irritated me when Gurumayi told the Oakland Ashram to open their homes to the people at risk in the Oakland Hills fire of 1991. In a holocaust that displaced nearly 10,000 people, these "devotees" folk found exactly one family of devotees to invite. In comparison, Berkeley’s lesbian-owned Brick Hut Cafe fed an endless stream of firefighters and emergency workers on their own tab during the week of that nightmare. And my jaw dropped when I heard people tell me about the conversation on the telephone I had with Gurumayi when the fire broke out, reported as though they, not I, had made that call from a San Francisco high rise that unforgettable Sunday afternoon.

As time wore on, I became increasingly aware of a huge gap widening between the astonishing, amazing spiritual experiences I would have in the presence of this truly remarkable woman and the way so many of her followers threw ethics, compassion, and manners to the wind in their addictive quest to be near her. It was not about spiritual awakening or finding the god within (who is there, within all of us, no-ticket-to-punch, comes-with-the-service), so much as it was bragging to your friends that you knew where Swami got her nails done in Manhattan or that you’d had “work” done by the same plastic surgeon she used. A simple equation: The more air you breathed in her actual presence, the more your individual self-worth capitalized. Much like sports figures, movie actors, rock stars ....

What I finally concluded was, Gurumayi is herself simply a mirror, a mirror held up to us of our culture, our society, our way of being here, now, this place. She is different in Mexico, different in Europe. I think from whatever place she finds herself, she draws upon that energy to show those people the nature and texture of the life surrounding them. While there were some lovely, amazing people surrounding this woman (some of whom I am still close friends with, or simply admire very much), much of what I saw among her “devotees” sickened me. And not just shallow “It’s Tuesday-so-let’s-find-God” stuff; or “Guru gave me Shaktipat so my shit no longer smells,” but some really ugly stuff. One example was a former director of the Oakland Ashram who refused to fix the lock on the back door of an apartment she rented to a long-time Ashram resident who was dying of metastic breast cancer, but did manage to raise her rent. I literally threw up in the bathroom of the Ashram upon learning of this. Is Gurumayi responsible for those people? Or the experiences Liz Gilbert had in India? Or is she a wonderful, beautiful mirror, reflecting back the very best and worst we are capable of? I couldn’t even begin to answer that. Except when I talked to Swami Prabuddhananda at the SF Vedanta Society about this, he said, “Yes, all true, but please, show me what part of all this is not God?”

The last time I saw Gurumayi at the Oakland Ashram, I suspect she had become completely worn out and frustrated with the “Hollywood star” energy her followers and the Liz Gilberts of the world surrounded her with. Even though I had known her for nearly two decades, I couldn’t get into the main meditation hall. A friend gave me a seat in a nearby building where they were televising her sitting in her Guru’s chair on two giant TV screens. It was on Guru Purnima, “the Guru’s moon,” the brightest full moon of the summer, and thousands of people were crowded in just to catch the merest glimpse of her. She said, “People, people, people. I am NOT the moon! I am only the finger pointing at the moon.” Then, darkness on the screen, and then, the moon, the full moon over Oakland, broadcast to us. I walked out into the night air and stood on the corner, looking at the moon, watching her being driven away in her Lincoln Towncar. She hadn't come down the chimney, and she didn't leave in a sleigh pulled by reindeer (or, for that matter, wise men didn't seem in evidence). I believe the most astonishing thing about her is that she is a human being. Just like the rest of us. I think we feel she, and Jesus, and other teachers, must be somehow very different from us. If she is, then we have no obligation to try harder, be better, grow more, become extraordinary. How very tiresome (and lonely) for them it must be!

The next day I did go by the Ashram, but wasn’t “allowed” inside a place where I had taken care of the garden courtyard for years, not because I had done anything 'wrong,' but because I wasn't a part of the 'in-crowd' who ran the place. I walked around to Marshall Street where I found folks so desperate to be near her that they were leaning against a wooden wall separating the Ashram's little courtyard garden from a parking lot. It seemed Gurumayi was inside, hanging out with the wealthy and influential members of the community. Someone waved me over, and I crowded in with the others, my ear against the fence, just for a moment, to hear her voice. When I realized what I was doing, I stepped back. I am, after all, a light-filled child of the universe. (As poet laureat Billy Collins wrote, “I am so full of light that if you cut me, I would shine.”) I am not a beggar groveling in a parking lot for crumbs from someone who is supposedly my teacher. I thanked the man who had given me his spot and walked away.

Certainly, Gurumayi is an extraordinary person. I think what she would tell you if you actually listened to her is, she would counsel you to eat mindfully, share what you have, meditate every day, be aware, kind and caring of the folks in your life, and show respect for that which deserves respect. To try to see the divine in each other. To feel gratitude and appreciation for what you have been given. And to walk. Walk, walk, walk. Outdoors. In nature. With life all around. Breathe it in. Connect with it. I mean, this is a woman who walked up Mt. Fujiyama on a whim! She has long long toes, and loves loves loves to walk. “Eat, Pray, Love” are not the bulletpoints of what she teaches. Oh, sure, go ahead, read Gilbert's book, if you must. But I'd think better time spent would be Ayya Khemma's Being Nobody, Going Nowhere. Yes, by all means, go to the movie. I think Julia Roberts recently built a new house in LA and probably could use the money. If you have the means, spend time traveling. Italy is so wonderful in the fall. But understand, the spiritual path is not an easy one. Money, good connections, and the right car won’t get you there. And there are no shortcuts.

But if you are serious, there are many other such extraordinary teachers, all across the globe. Throw a stone and you will find someone, if that’s what you want. Go to Green Gulch, Gold Mountain, Plum Village, Ganga-ji, Ammachi, Thich Nhat Hahn, Pema Chodron, Joko Beck, John of God, and on and on. You will find so very many lost and lonely folks looking for them. And you will find some deep and honest spiritual warriors to keep you company as well. Because, as Swami Prabuddhananda recently said, “If you aren’t spending your life trying to connect with the Divine, well, that’s just dumb.” But, caveat emptor, as I knew in my 20s, and know so completely today, anyone who pays big bucks to become “enlightened” isn’t.

___________________________________________

I don't feel like risking legal action by using an image of Swami Chidvilasananda, because the SYDA Foundation gets very nasty about such things. Instead, I'm posting a photo my friend Grace Harwood took of what I would like to see more of us "becoming," a simple monk walking in front of the M.H. DeYoung Museum in Golden Gate Park. If you want to see what Gurumayi looks like: http://www.siddhayoga.org/gurumayi-chidvilasananda

TIME TO UPDATE: AMERICAN GOTHIC

"Once there was a way to get back home ...."

This post is particularly dedicated to Harry Ibsen and Constance Carlson Ibsen, who share my loves of great cars and honest unions, with my love. mp

Maybe he was one of those "Depression Era kids" trying to "straighten out" the Baby Boomers, but when I was 19, my dad bet me $100 that I couldn't last a month in a factory. (I was between junior and senior years in college at that point, and I presume he thought I knew too much of the "reel world," and virtually nothing of "the real one.") In 1968, $100 was no joke, my friends, so off I packed to Eureka-Williams' employment office, applying for a job on the line.

The first morning of the first day, my assigned job was to pick up an upright waxer, swing it upside down over the head of a co-worker, and put it on the bench so she could air-drill four screws into the base. Just an FYI, the current Eureka upright vacuum weighs 21.5 lbs. The waxer was heavier -- I seem to remember 25 lbs. I took one look at the woman standing next to me, who had been working on the line for some 15 years, and I knew, dead to rights, that hitting her in the head with a waxer was a poor survival strategy.

So, up and over, up and over, up and over for two hours, 120 minutes, one waxer every three minutes. You do the math. Then, coffee break. I just sat on the floor and leaned on the concrete block wall in the women's locker room. Someone brought me a cup of coffee from the machine. "Oh, I can't pay you... I haven't gotten my check yet."

"Yeah, that's all right. We take turns paying for the coffee," someone explained.

Precisely as I was trying to figure out what would really happen if I simply put the waxer down and walked away, the noon whistle blew. My arms and shoulders were so spent, I could barely lift my sandwich or drink the soup from my thermos. All around me, people laughed and talked and jostled as though their muscles weren't burning in pain. I knew death was preferable, but was too damn tired to die.

When we returned, I discovered the devil had written another chapter of hell for me. Rather than lifting the waxers, I now stood motionless, or shifting from foot to foot, while another absolute stranger lifted the waxers over my head and I drilled in the four screws. At 2:00, another cuppa and two cookies appeared magically in my lap in the ladies' lounge. I managed a weak smile, mainly because I was conscious enough to pick up on the conversation on the other side of the room. They were putting into a betting pool over whether I would show up the next morning.

After I managed to drive my 1955 Ford Fairlane (with overdrive) five miles home and take a brief nap in the parking lot, it took me 10 minutes to walk up one flight of steps to my apartment, where I fell onto the couch dead asleep. My roommate woke me up at 11:30 with a hot bowl of soup and cornbread, and then ran a hot bath for me. She may have said something to me. I don't know. I was too tired to hear.

Just another FYI: betting against my stubbornness is a lost cause. During the days that passed, I learned a number of life lessons: how MUCH the government takes out in taxes; don't talk politics at work; not everyone is a brain surgeon; being smart isn't everything; and you can get used to pretty much anything. After I got paid, I bought everyone in the women's lounge coffee, and totally startled them. That's when I realized they'd just been "bein' nice" to buy my coffee when I was broke (and saving my dignity). I learned many things about my coworkers in those brief days with them. That standing at the same drill press for 30 years will wear concrete into inverted "normal curves" where your feet have stood. That one woman lived in an all-red interior "double-wide," including using red light bulbs. I asked her if there were any problems living in the all-red trailer, and she said, "Well, only on Sundays and holidays, you can't read the calendar."

But there came a pivotal day when all of my preconceived notions about union factory workers got blown out of the water big-time. The management people decided to replace the metal step-on switches with plastic ones. The assembly line was shut down, and the whole place fell silent. As we held our stations and watched, one of the foremen, a union rep, and an inspector installed the new switch on a waxer. Then, with clicker in hand, the inspector began stepping on the switch. On ... off ... on ... off ... on ... off ... on ... No other sound. At 63, the switch broke. They replaced it with another. On ... off ... on ... Broken, at 61. The union rep raised her hand. Everyone sat down on the stools which stood behind all of our stations, but which were so rarely used.

Books and newspapers came out of backpacks. A couple of transistor radios. Random decks of cards. "What's going on?" I asked."

"Sit down," my neighbor said.

I sat. "But what's going on?"

"That's what's going on. We're sitting."

"People work hard for their money," someone else said. "They deserve better."

We sat, played cards, read, listened to the radio, smoked, waited, for two and a half days. Then the union rep came down, followed by a fork lift with boxes of the metal switches. Just as quickly, the line came back to life. Again, a new waxer came off the line, every three minutes, with the durable metal step-on switches. (Okay, I know this is a long piece. Go get your tea and come on back for the second half... I just hate the idea of my readers suffering!)

"The Ford Pinto was a subcompact manufactured by the Ford Motor Company for the North American market, first introduced on September 11, 1970 [speaking of terrorism! mp]. Before production[,] however, Ford engineers discovered a major flaw in the car[']s design. In nearly all rear-end crash test collisions[,] the Pinto's fuel system would rupture extremely easily. Because assembly-line machinery was already tooled when engineers found this defect, top Ford officials decided to manufacture the car anyway, exploding gas tank and all, even though Ford owned the patent on a much safer gas tank. Safety was not a major concern to Ford at the time of the development of the Pinto. Lee Iacocca, who was in charge of the development of the Pinto, had specifications for the design of the car that were uncompromisable. These specifications were that "the Pinto was not to weigh an ounce over 2,000 pounds and not cost a cent over $2,000." Any modifications[,] even if they did provide extra safety for the customer[,] that brought the car closer to the Iacocca’s limits was rejected.

"The rush of the Pinto from conception to production was a recipe for disaster. Many studies have been concluded by Mother Jones on Pinto accident reports which have revealed conclusively that if a Pinto being followed at over 30 miles per hour was hit by that following vehicle, the rear end of the car would buckle like an accordion, right up to the back seat. The tube leading to the gas-tank cap would be ripped away from the tank itself, and gas would immediately begin sloshing onto the road around the car. The buckled gas tank would be jammed up against the differential housing (the large bulge in the middle of the rear axle), which contains four sharp, protruding bolts likely to gash holes in the tank and spill still more gas. Now all that is needed is a spark from a cigarette, ignition, or scraping metal, and both cars would be engulfed in flames. If a Pinto was struck from behind at higher speed say, at 40 mph chances are very good that its doors would jam shut and its trapped passengers inside would burn to death." (Source: Mother Jones.)

So, somewhere in the late 1960s, early 1970s, the American worker began to lose the battle to people like Iacocca and those who originated the grand scheme of "planned obsolescence." (For more on that misguided philosophy and its unholy results, see Vance Packard's The Waste Makers (1960), an exposé of "the systematic attempt of business to make us wasteful, debt-ridden, permanently discontented individuals.")

In contrast to the wonderful design, engineering, and construction of which we were so capable and respected the world over, exemplified by the gorgeous 1951 Kaiser pictured here and the Golden Gate Bridge, the people who were "management," those "white collar bastards" we used to routinely suspect and detest, began to produce goods which were meant to break, fall apart, give out, wear out, be crap, need replacement, okay? And, as I have said, as the unions all across the country have said, we fought this. We read our Consumer Reports, talked to our friends and family, did what we could to find the Maytags, the Levis, the Amanas, the American-made goods that were worth our hard-earned money. (Now, not only are we not resistant to the shenanigans of those "white collar bastards," we don't even see that there might be a problem with electing the son of an SS officer governor of California.)

The white collar bastards who ran things with a slide rule and an eye to their own bonuses and golden parachutes, who paid pro-employer (read "union-busting") law firms like Littler Mendelson, P.C. to destroy labor unity, eliminate benefits, and erode the rights of the American worker, eventually, somehow, they got control of everything. Somehow, we got confused. We let them. It's not that I think unions are all that and a cherry on top. But it is the mongoose and the cobra thing. Any fool would be afraid of both of them. Now the American workforce just bends over for the corporations. (Corporations, in my view, battle for first place with nuclear weapons as the very worst thing we as a people ever visited on the planet Earth). The very idea that we should act in concert in the workplace to provide our customers with the very best we can give them brings a snicker of derision.

When Enron imploded, their latest little brainchild in an obscenely ruthless quest to grab money from anyone within stealing range so they could continue to snort more of the world's resources up their noses, drive ever bigger BMWs and screw even more young foolish women, was to buy the water rights to India from corrupt government officials over there. Yes, in fact, you did hear that right. All of the water rights to India. Which would mean every single human life on the subcontinent would depend on people like Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, people with absolutely no moral or ethical context, for the second most valuable substance required to sustain life on the planet, the first being the air we breathe. I assume no one really requires further comment from me on this nightmare. Except to say that if that isn't terrorism, what is? And Bechtel Corporation, for one, is still trying to pull this deal off, according to those in the know at Human Rights Watch. Not only in India, but in Latin America as well.

So now, in 2009, we have sunk to a place so low that Stewart Purnell, the owner of Peanut Corp. of America, can sit before a committee of the House of Representatives and refuse to eat peanuts from his own company, smug in his belief that risking the public safety is not as important as his little company's bottom line. So sleazy that he simply refused to answer questions put to him by the United States Congress by wrapping his very small self in the United States Constitution's protections against self-incrimination after he had ordered "product" shipped throughout the country since the company's 2006 request that JLA USA testing service "help control salmonella in the plant." After Darlene Cowart of JLA USA visited Peanut Corp.'s plant and pointed out problems with the company's peanut roasting and storage which could lead to salmonella, the PCA discontinued using the lab for testing purposes on the grounds that the testers had "identified salmonella too many times." (Um, don't shoot the messenger, Mr. Purnell?) So we have what? A confirmed nine deaths and 600 cases of potentially deadly salmonella? And this is a problem because....?

Mr. Purnell of course is the bastard spiritual son of Lee Iacocca who is responsible for far more deaths. "By conservative estimates Pinto crashes have caused 500 burn deaths to people who would not have been seriously injured if the car had not burst into flames. The figure could be as high as 900. Burning Pintos [became] such an embarrassment to Ford that its advertising agency, J. Walter Thompson, dropped a line from the end of a radio spot that read[,] 'Pinto leaves you with that warm feeling.'"

(Two years before the release of the Pinto, one of our neighbor men was arrested for stealing a chicken from an IGA to feed his family, and spent five years in Menard State Prison for stealing. When his wife chased the power company man up the phone pole for trying to shut off her lights, my parents collected the money to pay her bill and buy her kids groceries. At this juncture, Purnell faces one year in jail and $1000 fine.)

Of course, incalculable are the effects of the mistrust created in this country of American-made small cars. Yes, we lovingly buy our Toyotas, our VWs, our Hondas. The saddest joke in all of that is that the Japanese purchased the plans for the very self-same 1955 Ford Fairlane four-cylinder overdrive which was my first car, and updated its plans to become the wildly popular Toyota Corolla, which we couldn't buy enough of. And, happily, we discovered Accords and Camrys as we grew older and had more disposable income. Buy American? Are you nuts? When an Accord will run 300,000 miles, if properly cared for? Low emissions, terrific performance, stylish looks, great ride! Detroit buys up the rights to electric cars and now we're driving what? Oh, Prius. You know. Toyota. Why? Because we know it didn't bother Lee Iacocca to turn us into crispy critters just so long as we signed on for those monthly payments. Stick a little American flag in the window of the dealership so people would feel patriotic and let them pay for death traps on time. What a great guy! Saved Chrysler. American hero.

Once there was a way to get back homeward

Once there was a way to get back home

Sleep pretty darling, do not cry

And I will sing a lullaby . . . "

(Golden Slumbers, Beatles...)

And so this brings us where? The Industrial Workers of the World were the first American union to use the sit-down strike, which is a form of civil disobedience in which an organized group of workers, usually employed at a factory or other centralized location, take possession of the workplace by "sitting down" at their stations, effectively preventing their employers from replacing them with strikebreakers or, in some cases, moving production to other locations. "The United Auto Workers staged successful sit-down strikes in the 1930s, most famously in the Flint Sit-Down Strike of 1936-1937. In Flint, Michigan, strikers occupied several General Motors plants for more than forty days, and repelled the efforts of the police and National Guard to retake them. A wave of sit-down strikes followed, but diminished by the end of the decade as the courts and the National Labor Relations Board held that sit-down strikes were illegal and sit-down strikers could be fired. While some sit-down strikes still occur in the United States, they tend to be spontaneous and short-lived." [Wikipedia....] And the sit-down strike, of course, is the precursor to the sit-in.

While our elected (and bought by corporate interests) representatives sold our public airwaves to the cable companies for a penny on the dollar of what they were worth (as though you could ever put a value on a free people's right to know rather than be manipulated), Rupert Murdoch and the other robber-baron media conglomerates worked 24-7 to convince us that the problem with Detroit is the workers. The Unions. Greedy. Lazy. Trouble. Un-American. Always their little mantra. If you don't want your kids to die in illegal and unjust wars? Un-American. If you don't want your kids to die in death-trap cars? Un-American. If you vote to support small business, good schools, election reform? Un-bloody-American. Ad nauseum.

Somehow, we've transformed in the past three-quarters of a century, or three generations, from a people who would stand up and stop the companies from all manner of bad behavior, to people who would allow their life savings to be handed over to robber barons who have no shame at paying themselves huge bonuses for destroying the very companies they were charged with the stewardship of. Oh, yes, we are the victims of terrorism, hell yes! But not from a few impoverished groups of angry, frustrated people from middle-eastern countries. The terrorism destroying our once-great nation is economic terrorism, which has siphoned off the money, the jobs, the means of producing goods and services, and the ownership of the media (with the one notable exception being this internet) which we could use to discuss these issues in a thoughtful and deep way. And, given the opportunity, they have not only destroyed the means of obtaining higher education, they've sucked off so much of the resources of our educational systems that we are even hard-pressed to keep the bathrooms clean, functioning, and disease-free.

Somehow we've lost our dignity, our sense, our ability to work together for the greater good, our focus and our vision.

Somehow we've lost the ability to talk to each other. To listen. To solve our problems as a group. To stop those who do not wish us well from taking the very words that we need now, such as working together collectively, and making them "un-American." [See, www.rockridgeinstitute.org.] We can't even live together without large dogs and guns. We are a terrified people in desperate need of salvation. And it will not be Jesus who saves us. If we are saved at all, it will be our own doing. When we relearn what we always knew before. How to invent. How to take care of ourselves. How to think of our communities and people as a whole. How to educate our children. How to protect them from credit card companies, sexual predators, drug dealers. America will again deserve the moniker of "great nation" when, sober, serious, and dignified, we move forward and relearn how to coordinate our efforts and, when necessary, shut down the line.

Copyright 2009 by Mugsy Peabody. All rights reserved. Photographs of 1951 Kaiser used courtesy of Grace Harwood, Images of Amazing Grace, Oakland, California.

Why We Need The Ledbetter Equal Pay Act

Note: This story is for Suzanne Conti and all the other tough, brave, farsighted women who carry it for the rest of us. So good to know there are those whose dignity and self-respect will never be on the table. Baci Baci. MP

I had been driving for hours alone in my 1983 Corolla across the prairie from Red Cloud, Nebraska, headed across Oklahoma to Perryton, Texas, to visit a friend from the 1984 Women's Voices writing retreat. Red Cloud, as you might know, is where Willa Cather was born. (If you don't know who she is, well, that's why God made Google.) Red Cloud is a scant 10 miles from McCook, where my mother's mother was born, and where my great grandmother, Martha Ann Duffield, "lost her mind" because the wind across the unplowed prairie was unrelenting, and "loud as a freight train."

As my tires rolled mile after mile onto the odometer, I mused over great-grandma's being roadkill in the headlights of Manifest Destiny, over her premature death at 45 from the madness caused by deafening isolation -- while others, like My Antonia, thrived and lived to ripe old age.

When my car radio could only crackle country 'n western, I really began to comprehend her plight on a visceral level. There was nothing, in any direction, except the unbroken horizon line. It was clear I was never going to get out of here. New meaning to the expression, "500 miles west of East Jesus." No way out but through. I began singing to myself, an old Illinois folk song:

Oh, the horses run around

Their feet are on the ground

Oh who will wind the clock when I’m away….

A snake’s belt slips, because he has no hips, and

We hope that Grandma’s clothes will soon fit Ginny….”

I've always been dedicated to maintaining a hold on sanity, no matter how tenuous, but I realized my grip was slipping. So I pulled over and pawed through my bags for tapes, finally settling on The Greatest Hits of Elvis Presley. Laugh all you want, but let me tell you, I couldn't have beat that with a stick. If you are ever on a seemingly endless road trip ("Ace of Cakes" staff, are you listening? Geoff?), the King will carry you.

After I'd sung along with "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" until I'd deluded myself into thinking I actually sounded pretty good, I saw a bump on the horizon. I pulled over again, and drank an orange juice out of the cooler, figuring my blood sugar was dipping to the point of delusion. But after Elvis and I had backed away from the low blood sugar edge, the bump was still there, and actually looked like a square.

The square grew larger and larger, until, an hour or so later, it proved to be a one-room concrete block building with a wooden lean-to kitchen built-out in the back, and an outhouse. The sign on the side said, "Rosie's Cafe." "Oh, sweet Jesus, there is a god," I sobbed, leaning on my steering wheel. I checked the time. 5:35. No wonder I was half-nuts! I hadn't eaten since breakfast.

But as soon as I walked through the door of the cafe, I realized I had truly crossed over. Every single person in the cafe wore either a vermilion or red clown wig, a bulbous red plastic nose, clown make-up, blue overalls, tattered boots, and striped shirts. No one spoke, but they all turned and stared. A couple of bicycle horns at the ready were squeezed in greeting. Since the room was at best 12x12 feet, it wasn't an option either to back out and run for my car or slip quietly into the chair at the one vacant table. I sat.

From the lean-to came a full-sized Raggedy Ann doll, balancing four blue-plate specials on her arms. After downloading, she stopped in front of me and pulled her order pad from her apron, her pencil from her wig. "Hungry, stranger?" she asked, and I thought, "No stranger than you, lady...." I ordered from the black chalkboard menu above the soft-drink cooler. Raggedy Rosie brought me a soda and returned to the kitchen. I tasted the drink gingerly, half expecting exploding paper snakes to emerge from the bottle, but it in fact tasted like "The Real Thing." I began to settle down a bit and to contemplate my fate in this bus full of clowns.

Who had clearly been contemplating me. A late 20th c. Lesbian from Oakland, California. Just guessing, I'd say I was a first. Might as well have been from the moon, Alice. While I smiled, and others smiled back, there was little direct conversation while we ate. I was most of my way through the actually quite good plate when one fine gentleman carefully wiped his mouth with his red bandanna and asked the assembled, "Well folks, why don't we take this little lady from California down to see the dinosaur?" As I listened to the general cheering and hoots of agreement, I began to see my entire life pass before my eyes. Well, mostly the part about my mother telling me women who drove around the country by themselves met with a "bad end."

The fella with the bandanna and the suggestion said, "You ride with us." Soon I was, with the entire cafe, driving off into the Oklahoma sunset in a caravan of clowns in Ford and Chevy pick-ups, at the time, I thought, an apt metaphor for this great land of ours.

About 20 minutes later, over dirt roads, through cattle gates, and over gullies, we arrived. I found myself gazing across a huge pit in the earth at a circle of clowns, and I thought, "Perhaps there is a clear advantage to knowing which ditch you will actually end up in, but what it is, I cannot think." Then, I looked down. And there, 12 feet below me, was a complete fossilized Sauroposeidon. "Sauroposeidon is a genus of sauropod dinosaur found in rocks dating to the Early Cretaceous, a period when the sauropods of North America had diminished in both size and numbers, making it the last known giant dinosaur on the continent." (Thanks, Wikipedia.) (Note: At the time, I had no idea that is what I was looking at, but I knew it was one damn big dinosaur.)

One of the women asked me if I would like one of the bones. "I don't think so," I responded, looking at the yellow plastic "Do Not Cross. Crime Scene" tape which had been unrolled and staked around the entire pit. I wondered to myself how on earth the paleontologist had figured out this poor Sauroposeidon had been murdered.

"Why not?"

"Well, I think if this fella has been here for millions of years, we'd best not disturb."

The guy with the red bandanna nodded. "That fella from the University said we needed to leave it be until they've figured her all out. And they're still digging."

"You know, it's strange to watch them down in there in that hole," another clown said. "They're usin' paint brushes and dustpans to take the dirt off them bones. And then they're puttin' the dirt through a flour sifter. I'd figure they'd be petro-fied, but one of them fellas said they wasn't."

We all stood there, marveling, in the sunset. I took a few desultory pictures, but it really was too dark to make anything much.

"My name's John," the lead clown said. "And this is the Missus."

Then, sounding off like the original Mouseketeers, they all introduced themselves.

"...George.... And the Missus..."

"...Kermit.... And the Missus..." all around the pit.

I asked one of the women directly, "And what was your name?"

"Oh, I'm the Missus..."

I asked three of them, and each time, "the Missus" was the answer. So I observed, "Why, all you ladies must be related."

"How so?" the Missus of the Bandanna clown asked.

"Oh, because you all have the same name." Fortunately, everyone laughed. We ambled companionably back to the pickups.

Rosie was most glad to see us all, particularly since we'd left without anyone paying. We all stood outside in the new moonlight, drinking coffee and enjoying the night air. "Mugsy?" Rosie asked.

"Yes?"

"Kin I ask you a question?"

"Sure, if I can ask you one back."

"Did you ever figure out it's Hallowe'en?" They all busted up, and of course, realizing how hilarious it was, I fell out myself.

Then Rosie asked, "What's your question, Mugsy?"

"Well, how'd you end up with your own name? None of these other ladies seem to have one."

"Oh, that," she said. "See, my husband passed away."

I drove on into the night toward the Texas panhandle, over who knows how many Sauroposiedons, past oil wells pumped Oklahoma crude from the residue of their days. Listening to Elvis, musing about my great-grandmother who transplanted from Hartford to the Nebraska Territory via a wagon and horses, a place where women had nothing, not even their own name, from which to build a life. Musing about loneliness and silence, about dinosaurs buried and and those still alive. Knowing this was a place where I'd have no chance of surviving.

I don't remember where I stayed that night. I suppose I was near enough a town with a motel or I drove on through the night to Perryton. But whenever I hear some city woman say she can't imagine why we still need the Ledbetter Equal Pay Act or the ERA in this day and age, I remember those women standing around the Sauroposeidon dig, dressed as identical clowns, not even able to offer their given name to a stranger. Koko, the great ape, had a name. Alex, the grey parrot, had a name, and his obituary would be printed in The Economist. But not these human women.

I am so very fortunate not to have had to marry someone because, as one of my friend's mother told her, "at least he was clean," just to survive. I feel so blessedly fortunate to have had been able to create a situation for myself where I have what Virginia Woolf called for so very many years ago, "Money and a room of our own with a lock on the door..."

Copyright 2009 by Mugsy Peabody. All world rights reserved.

Note: The wagon and oxen photograph was taken by my grandmother, though in the 1930s, not at the time they lived in Nebraska.

Celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr. 1929 - 1968

Nearly a decade ago, my friend Grace Harwood sent out the above card in honor of Dr. King, commemorating the brave stance he took against the VietNam War, for which he was vilified. With her kind permission, I reprint it here.

From Dr. King's speech of April 4, 1967:

"We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The "tide in the affairs of men" does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on..." We still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.

"We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world -- a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

"Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter -- but beautiful -- struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history."

For those of you who don't read Italian, the St. Francis prayer in English:

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;

where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,

grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;

to be understood, as to understand;

to be loved, as to love;

for it is in giving that we receive,

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Carousel of Happiness

Once upon a time there was a wonderful 17-year-old red-headed boy from Texas who was raised up right so when his country was at war, he wanted to do the right thing. Even though the war was so wrong, he was too young to know that. He didn't want to kill anyone, though, so he joined the Marine Corps and trained in Australia as an interpreter in Vietnamese.

But, just because he had a good heart didn't mean everyone else did. So when he landed in Vietnam, they put a rifle in his hand and sent him into the middle of the Tet Offensive.

He told me later the only way he retained his sanity in the middle of that hell was, at night when he was in the foxholes, he had the mechanical works of a music box in his pocket, and he would play it, and imagine a merry-go-round where the people killing each other across the trenches and their families could come together in peace and enjoy each other and the sunny day, rather than turning each other into hamburger, just so the United States could control the oil in the Indochine Peninsula, or whatever game the big boys were playing this time, using these kids as pawns.

Even hell will end, eventually, and for Scott Harrison, he found himself in San Francisco, volunteering for Amnesty International of the US, where he found his they-broke-the-mold wife Ellen Moore, and together they pursued his dream of an Urgent Action Network to rally support for Prisoners of Conscience around the world who were being tortured or in danger of losing their lives. With pluck and skill, they moved to Colorado, built a house at Nederland, and set about 30 years of work as pioneers in the battle-field of human rights.

But having lived through Vietnam, Scott had his nightmares, his guilt, his need to do something with his hands. And so he began carving. The rabbit was the first, and then .... they came. The St. Bernard. The Ostrich. The Bear. The Mermaid. The little girl dancing for the top. He carved and carved, and they began to emerge from those nightmare foxholes of the late 1960s into his basement, and then into a warehouse, in Nederland. Last count, there were 38 or 39 of them, many sponsored by local folks at $1,000 a pop for their nameplates on their animals. On the world's first "green" carousel -- which will be powered by the sun, in the main, and actually contribute energy to the grid.

For nearly 20 years, he has carved and painted his full-sized carousel. And as he has moved forward, it was the if-you-build-it, they-will-come scenario. The Seagram's Company in Peoria donated first-growth lumber from an old brewery for the floorboards. Scott found the works somewhere in the northwest. A real Wurlitzer has appeared. And so it goes. He's now donated the carousel to a not-for-profit foundation, who has just broken ground on the building where this treasure will live. Before the donation, Scott and Ellen had it appraised by Dewy Smith, a folk art expert, who said it was worth $1.5 million. If you have seen them in person, however, you know the whole kit and kaboodle is priceless.

Now retired from Amnesty, they both move forward, Ellen teaching HUMAN RIGHTS: PROMOTION AND PROTECTION, AN NGO PERSPECTIVE at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and archiving oral histories with the founders of Amnesty in the US. Scott, as with other non-profits, searches for the funds to fund the building and open the Carousel of Happiness in Nederland, at the Gateway to the Rockies, for generations of people to enjoy. When I think of heroes, they are two of the first to come to mind.

http://www.carouselofhappiness.org/about.html, for more information, a video and tons of pictures of the animals. (These photos courtesy of Grace Harwood, Images of Amazing Grace, Oakland, California.)

“The world is a beautiful and terrible place. Deeds of horror are committed every minute and in the end those we love die. If the screams of all earth’s living creatures were one scream of pain, surely it would shake the very stars. But we have love. It may seem a frail defence against the horrors of the world, but we must hold fast and believe in it, for it is all that we have.”

--P.D. James, The Private Patient

A posting from the Gay Center of the World: Ignorant, bigoted people, do your best, but we will win

Two stories above me on the roof of the new Packard Lofts on Broadway, as I pedal pedal pedal at the Downtown Oakland "Y", a green and white flag fights with the rain and wind, wrapped around its flagpole, struggling to breathe free. This flag is supposed to be a rebuttal to the most famous Oaklander -- Gertrude Stein -- who supposedly said of this town, "There is no there there." Just as straight people normally misunderstand gay culture, that is NOT what at all she meant, and if you read her entire remark, you understand perfectly. Stein was born in a grandiose Victorian near 25th Avenue and 13th below what is now Highland Hospital. While she was an expatriate in Paris, the house burned to the basement. The majority of her family and friends had long since moved to Europe. The Great Earthquake destroyed the San Francisco she had known as a young person. So when she went to her beloved neighborhood of memory, there were none of the markers of land and experience that had constituted the world of her childhood and the basis of her memories of Oakland. She remarked on this, saying, "There is no there there!" It was a sadness and longing for homeland behind that remark, a cry of the heart that many know so well.

As I pedal pedal pedal along on my exercycle road to nowhere, I note the green and white banner has now shed enough of the rain it is soaked with, and has begun to free itself from the flagpole. I think about the way what women say is so often ignored, or twisted, major parts left out, the meaning distorted or totally misunderstood. For instance, what Virginia Woolf actually said was, "To write poetry and fiction, a woman must have 500 pounds a year and a room of her own with a lock on the door." To any woman involved in the creative process, each and every one of these elements is fundamental. But that lock on the door is invariably left out of the quotation, and quite often the money as well. But for Woolf, a victim of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of her older brothers, nothing could have been more requisite to her creative process than the freedom provided by her own money and the means to prevent men from creeping up on her when she was writing (or sleeping).

The "There" flag has now freed itself from the post, and is attempting to fly, but still is stick wet to itself. And, pedal pedal pedal, speaking of distortion, omission, and dismissal of women, it is best not to get me started on the Oakland Black Panthers. But since you have Google, maybe you should check out the real Panthers who made the whole thing work (including writing the Manifesto), i.e., Dr. Angela Y. Davis, Elaine Brown, Kathleen Cleaver, Erika Huggins.... Oh, but this is another track for another day.

I have thought long and hard about what the hell is the problem with so-called straight people (many of whom are on the down-low) and gay people, and now I think I understand it. Discounting totally ignorant, bigoted, arrogant fools who are just frigging mean-spirited about anything not in their little narrow worlds (which only demonstrates that we make our own hells on earth), I think there's a huge huge huge misunderstanding about gay people among those straight folks who can't afford an expensive haircut, a catered wedding, don't work in the entertainment industry, and haven't got enough sense to get it that their favorite teachers, Ms. Eikenberry and Ms. Alexander, weren't just roommates. Are you ready? They just don't know us. They live beside us. We teach their children, write their books, sing their songs, connect their wireless service, fix their cars, bag their groceries, take pictures of their kids at graduation, and whatever else you got. But they don't know us. And even if they did, they still claim to have a problem. So I thought more. And watched the flag dry itself and unfurl.

I believe the majority of people who are against "gays" in this country have an image of us in their heads which has as little to do with who we really are and how we love as Foster Farms caged deformities have to do with free-range grass-fed Rosies.

I think there are a whole lot of folks out there who base their ideas about being gay on homosexual prison rape. And they equate the two. But here's the truth. That's like equating heterosexual rape with straight marriage. Prison rape and straight rape are about brutal power, like Bush kissing Barbra Streisand at the Kennedy Honors, when he knew bloody well she hates his guts, or giving the German Chancellor an uncalled for shoulder rub at the G-Eight Conference.

The majority of rapes, both in prison and out, are committed by straight men. (Have you noticed? Those dicks have taken over the airwaves, literally, and are apparently the most important parts of the American anatomy. [Maybe you've noticed as well -- those dicks apparently don't work. They need constant drugging to enlarge them, to make them "flow", to work at all.] In fact, over 80 percent of all sex crimes are perpetrated by straight men, okay?)

Back to my point, now that the "There" flag is flying fully and freely over my recumbent exercycle in all its green and white glory: Gay love and gay life are as full of dance and song, light and life, loving touch, sweet notes left on the bathroom mirror in soap, remembered snatches of golden days, deep worry and concern for our loved ones as those of anyone (and of course we do it all with soooooooooooooooooooo much more style!). In fact, we have the same sorts of problems, as well. "Aren't you going to pay the rent this month? When are you getting a job, for chrissakes?" "Isn't it your turn to take out the compost?" "No, I don't want to go on some damn Olivia cruise. We need to paint the house this year!" "Could you please scrub your toes, damnit?" "No, I did the laundry last time, it's your turn." We don't force each other to have sex, we don't rape our children, we don't "recruit" straight people (who wants an amateur to practice on you?) And do I need to point out we're paying more taxes than the straight married folks?

Chickens in cages in dark places stacked on top of each other are not healthy living things. Brutalized men crowded into prisons for years on drugs and bad food are not healthy living things. That they treat each other brutally doesn't make them gay. It does make them crazy. And uncivilized. Elephants in zoos are not health living things. (Separate issue. Men who screw farm animals are not gay, just for the record.)

How do I know we'll win? Because we will. Because the kids get it. The majority are not anti-gay, any more than they think Senator Obama's race was a reason to vote against him. They just try to figure out their own destiny, as individuals. Yes, there are vicious rapists among them, like the kids who nearly killed a lesbian woman in Richmond last night in a gang rape because they saw the rainbow flag on her car. (And I sincerely hope those boys rot in the hell of Pelican Bay.) But the vast majority of young people believe you should find your own sexual destiny, your own life partner, and move forward without judging other people. While there is a lot of honest struggle among the under-30s, they mostly are into live and let live. (What a concept.)

So just a question for anyone still reading this who is against gay marriage. Do you really honestly believe you have more of a right to be married in the United States than Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner? National treasures both, who've contributed enormously to whatever culture there is in this country, and together 30 years? Or Elton John and David Furnish? I mean, really. The almighty dick is not going to fall off if gay marriage is legalized in the United States. And it will happen. We have been here for millenia, and we will dance on the graves of those who live in hate. Trust me.

Just a footnote. A hundred years after Gertrude Stein left Oakland for Europe, Oakland has the largest percentage of lesbian home ownership of any city in the United States. So if she and Alice came home now, I think they would have been most pleased with the there here now.

Guns vs. Butter

Here we are again, the same old question. We can borrow trillions of dollars from foreign nations and risk thousands upon thousands of the lives of our young people in pursuit of an illegal, un-winnable, and absurd war, but when Sen. Clinton proposes universal healthcare, or Pres-Elect Obama proposes rebuilding our failing infrastructure or fixing the toilets in our elementary schools so the kids don't risk epidemic disease going to public schools in the supposed richest country on earth, the republicans shout, "Oh, heavens no! We can't. The Economy!!!!"

So, Desi, 'splain it to me, please. Why is it good for the economy to dig a hole (war) and fill it up (with the body and bones of civilian people who we've murdered) but it is not good for the economy to build houses for the homeless, provide in-home assistance for the disabled and elderly, educate, really educate our children so they can think and make reasoned judgments, as the framers of the Constitution hoped for, rebuild our failing bridges, solve our energy problems, and otherwise strengthen our people and our physical plant in this country. I mean, here's a thought. Drug treatment and job therapy for people instead of prison?

If you want to make yourself entirely nuts on the subject, may I suggest http://armscontrolcenter.org/? But this is not rocket science. There are 80 billion, that's billion with a "b" (which rhymes with a "p" and that stands for pool, friends, trouble, folks, we got trouble...) there are 80 billion landmines in the world. The majority of which we built, bought and planted. Can we grow a good tomato? Not so much. But we can plant a landmine that will blow the legs off a small child playing soccer in a field next to the school in their village in virtually anywhere in the second or third world, thanks to the United States. If you want to help, http://www.banminesusa.org/, in honor of her Royal Highness, Diana, Princess of Wales, Tender of the True Flame, etc.

Change? Change would be from guns to butter (not that butter is all that great for us, either! I've long said forget oil. It's when we run out of sugar that this country will screech to a stone halt). Schools. Real education. Drug treatment for aging homeless Vietnam Veterans. Hey, there's an idea. Health care for everyone, including the vets of Iraq and Afghanistan. Shall I go on? I could list a thousand things we could do with this money before I spend the money we give out to Dig Hole Fill with Bones, Inc. every year. As Dr. Helen Caldicott has shown until she is blue pink and purple in the face, there's plenty of money to do the things we should be doing. We just have to quit making our economy run on fear. Prisons. War. Police. Oh, and get me started about the police. If your car gets stolen, you will receive a telephone call from the police three, maybe four days hence. If you park your car illegally, however, it will be three, maybe four minutes hence that they ticket you. And, as happened recently to one friend who sassed the cop for this very thing, you will lose your license for a month for fighting with a meter maid.

Am I ranting? Oh, I daresay. But I promise, if someone could please tell me what the difference is, why doing useful, helpful, important things is "bad" and evil insane immoral things is "good" for the economy, I'll shut up about it. Why oh why is it good for the economy to murder innocent people and squander our resources, but bad for the economy to rebuild our schools, factories, homes, small businesses? Can anybody anybody out there please clue me in on this?

<[p>And just a note. ANOTHER thing I was very disappointed in President Clinton about, refusing to sign the landmines ban. If you want more info about that, http://www.commondreams.org/views02/1021-04.htm. Somehow, I suspect he thinks there's a moral offset because he's working on global AIDS. Nope. Not in my book. He let us down by not keeping his pants zipped when he knew the neocons were after any little thing, and he let us down by refusing to sign the landmines ban.

Note: My ole pal Kathy Reilley figured out the reason Adsense keeps sending me Wal-Mart and Sam's Club ads (neither of which I shop at or endorse): They sell both guns AND butter! Of course!

मुसिंग्स ओं सोल्स्तिस

About 10 years ago, I found an eight-inch Miwok pestle grown into the rootball of a fallen giant in the forest at the Vedanta Retreat at Olema. Miwok used these to grind acorns for flour, they say. And the miracle of finding such a thing after the hundreds of years it had slept inside the soil of that rootball did not escape me. But I spent the next two hours looking for the mortar that went with it. Then I returned to the Retreat House and showed Swami Prabuddhananda the pestle. I asked him if I could keep it, and he responded, "Oh, if you must."

Then I told him of a day in the mountains in Colorado when I was sitting with my feet dragging in the water on either side of the point of a small island in the stream. In the midst of that, I understood the connectiveness of all things, matter and energy flows, essentially the whole of everything. I saw the whole of creation, of eternity, of the way that planets are atoms and solar systems molecules, snowbanks are sandunes. And even though it had been 25 years before, the absolute magic of that moment stayed with me. I was still trying to get that back. Just like I was trying to find the mortar. I couldn't see how it was possible for me ever to be satisfied if that were my character.

He said a couple of things. First, that the Miwok probably didn't carry their mortars, but just used rocks with hollows in them in situ. Why would they carry something that was all around them on the ground? The pestle, on the other hand, was a tool and valuable, because rare. So they would have taken that with them. That it was important to know what was which and not to carry the heavy mortar when you don't need to.

Second thing he said was that enlightenment comes and goes. And that I had probably been enlightened many times in my lifetime, but still hadn't gotten to the point of realizing that like everything else, it wasn't something I could hold onto. But I could use that experience to inform my perceptions of everything going forward. And so I try, lugging along the mortar, sometimes, and sometimes the pestle, sometimes enlightened, sometimes too in the dark to light the candle in my hand.

When I typed the Title on this blog, it translated my words, "Musings on the Solstice" into sanskrit letters. I have no idea what they mean. But I'm satisfied that this is what it is. May enlightenment catch up with you today, and may you be so enlightened that you don't try to hold onto it! Om Shanti Shanti Shanti.

Dr. Jane Goodall’s Impassioned Suggestions: “What We Must Do to Care for the Animals We Love”

Dr. Goodall, Dame of the British Empire, who recently shared The Leakey Prize with Japan’s beloved primatologist, Dr. Toshisada Nishida, has a new book out, written with Marc Bekoff, detailing what Huston Smith calls “The Ten Commandments for the future of advanced life on our planet.” The Leakey Prize, fyi, was established in 1990 “to reward intellectual achievement and express appreciation for research performed with courage and perseverance in the fields of ape and human evolution,” a most important endeavor in view of the number of human primates who refuse to evolve even to the point of accepting 18th century science.

I trust I am not violating their copyright by simply enumerating these for you, in hopes that (a) you will read the book; and (b) contribute to or volunteer to work with Dr. Goodall’s group, http://www.janegoodall.org/; the Leakey Foundation: http://leakeyfoundation.org/; or to one of my personal favorites, the Great Ape Trust of Iowa: http://www.iowagreatapes.org/:

The First Trust: Rejoice that we are part of the animal kingdom.

The Second Trust: Respect all life.

The Third Trust: Open our minds, in humility, to animals and learn from them.

The Fourth Trust: Teach our children to respect and love nature.

The Fifth Trust: Be wise stewards of life on Earth.

The Sixth Trust: Value and help preserve the sounds of nature.

The Seventh Trust: Refrain from harming life in order to learn about it.

The Eighth Trust: Have the courage of our convictions.

The Ninth Trust: Praise and help those who work for animals and the natural world.

The Tenth Trust: Act knowing we are not alone and live with hope.

Coda: After all is said and done, silence is betrayal.

The Ten Trusts was published by HarperOne, a Division of HarperCollins, New York ($14.95US).

We must not become a nation of cowards....

My friend Rosie is part of a family from Cambodia who purchased the Monte Vista Grocery on Piedmont Avenue a decade or so ago. She is short, beautiful, feisty, with a wonderful scamp of a daughter, Chrissie, and an elegant attitude toward life. I loved each member of her family who worked there, and often stopped to chat over the wonderful produce and reasonable prices.

We had spoken quietly of Pol Pot, Cambodia, and the nightmare they left behind, and I sometimes wondered what memories troubled their sleep. The entire family, although walking each day on the bones of a past so unspeakable I couldn’t begin to fathom what they had seen. Yet each was a smiling, pleasant, fun, energetic person to know.

One day Rosie introduced me to her beautiful mother, who spoke little, if any English. We nodded and smiled, held each other’s hands. We looked into each other’s faces, and knew if we could, we would be friends.

After her mother withdrew, over the vegetables I asked Rosie, “So where is your dad, Rosie?”

“Oh, he died,” she said, matter-of-factly, in the way people of great sorrow speak in even tones to protect themselves from intrusion.

“He did? What happened, Rosie?”

She looked at me to make sure I wanted to hear what she had to say. “They put him in the army.”

“But, what happened, Rosie?” I stumbled along where angels would fear to tread. “What happened to your father?”

“Well, they wanted him to kill a bunch of people, so he quit eating.”

I looked down at the boxes of beautiful fruit and vegetables that, because of these people, I had my easy choice of each day. I tried to remember how many millions of skulls they found in the killing fields of Pol Pot. “What happened to him, Rosie?” I asked, looking into her eyes.

She looked at me as though I were more stupid than the eggplant I had in my hand. “Well, Mugsy, if you stop eating, you die.”

“You mean, he starved himself to death rather than murder innocent people?” I felt my definition of courage rewriting itself in tears on my heart.

“Yes.”

She went back to unpacking the grapefruit. I knew I was upsetting her, but I had to ask one last question. “But Rosie, how many soldiers did that?”

“Oh, a lot of them.” We looked at each other through tears. I touched her hand, and went on to have my purchases weighed by a woman whose children had died in her arms of starvation. She’d been listening and handed me a tissue. “Have a nice day,” she said, as I left.

“You too, my friend,” I said, “You too.”

Can you possibly imagine United States solders choosing to starve themselves rather than kill innocent civilians? I am embarrassed to say it is beyond my imagination. And I believe that’s part of why we are so ineffective and defenseless against these rogue terrorist groups. We can’t begin to comprehend actually dying for our country. Even the soldiers we send to wherever this season’s “over there” is don’t actually believe they will die. We don’t even get it that these small rogue non-governmental groups are that serious. But they are. Deadly serious. We can't comprehend it because we don’t even know what that kind of courage is.

Football is the perfect metaphor for the United States vs. the rest of the known world.

When I was in Sorrento, I saw a large group of people leaning against a wall, intently watching something down below, in the churchyard. I wandered over, and saw it was a soccer game, including, from the looks of it, a grandmother and a bunch of teenaged kids. She was pretty well holding her own. It’s like this, all over the world, people of all ages put on their tennies and shorts, gather up their friends, and go outside to play soccer. If no friends are available, they kick the ball against a wall, happy and heartful in the endeavor.

Well, except in the United States. In the United States, football is mostly a corporate advertising opportunity, a spectator sport, another chance to market. Our players wear armor, and go out onto the field where they try to maim and cripple the other side, succeeding so often that major drugs are involved. We can’t even use a round ball, for god’s sake; we have to have this weird-Harold dead pig football and these ridiculous rules that really make no sense to anyone. (And change just as soon as you learn them.)

The involvement of actual people in football is mainly tailgate parties, eating themselves silly in the parking lot of the arena out of the backs of gas-guzzling vehicles often painted and decorated in the colors of their teams. Customizing costumes and organizing cheers are the other participation opportunities. Of course drinking oneself silly in the process is all part of this ritual.

Of course there are wingnut soccer fans all over the world, and professional soccer has a lot of the organized fan insanity surrounding it.

We are far more dedicated to and intent on our football than our system of government, our Constitution, or our Bill of Rights, the foundation of our country, which we profess to love so much. But we don't show it in any real way,other than sticking "God Bless America" bumper stickers on our trucks. We are in no way the people our founding mothers and fathers were, who came here in little wooden boats to a land with no electricity, no cell phones, no indoor plumbing. The soldiers of the Revolutionary army violated the very tenets of war for their time. British armies stood in the battlefield, while our guys hid behind rocks and trees and shot them as they stood. A new kind of warfare. Just as suicide bombing is a new kind of warfare. The British didn’t understand what was happening until it was too late. We must learn more quickly if we as a nation are to survive. And we must show a new kind of courage.

These are dangerous times. The threat to the United States is not from beyond our borders, but from within. Our wonderful Amy Goodman and her crew were in a house in Minnesota covering the convention when the police broke in and held them for hours with assault weapons, telling them they were being held not for anything they had done but because of what they might do. And when actually taken in, no charges were filed against them, they were told, because they hadn't done anything wrong. See www.democracynow.org for more information. Our own government is turning this country into a police state, and altogether too many US citizens think that's just fine. Our prisons are full of people we have thrown away because there's no work for them, and no value put on their lives. The independent press is imprisoned and bullied and locked up, and we ignore it. We lock ourselves away in our homes, afraid to walk down the street. We imagine invasions where none is threatened, and hand over the keys to our country to those who are not intelligent, who are corrupt, and who use our fear to manipulate us until accepting their violation of US and international law. Why? Because we are becoming such cowards that we will not stand up and face the bullies.

While we've worried about some phantom threat from overseas, Enron, Haliburton, and the neocons have made off with $3 trillion of our money, plus much of our 401k retirement funds, and now they also want our Social Security funds. The banks and lending institutions have put hundreds of thousands of us into bankruptcy, after they rewrote the bankruptcy laws to remove our protections. Our homes, all across the country, are in foreclosure. Families are being tractored off their farmland in record numbers, not seen since the Great Depression. Our urban jobs are vanishing, like water on a hot pavement. The public utilities have been privatized, so we now pay ridiculous amounts of money for telephones which work sometimes, break often, and are easily tapped. Our civil rights have been used as toilet paper in the White House. And still we babble on about President Clinton's "values" and say we don't "trust" Senator Obama.

Part of the problem is the number of citizens who have come here or been born only a little while ago, and have no personal memory of how it could be different, true, but the greater part is that we have become a nation of cowards. We are ignorant, some willingly, some not. We are afraid of the dark. And we well should be, because the darkness of ignorance is closing in all around us.

One time I went to hear the Tibetan Monks chanting in the ballroom at UC Berkeley in the evening, and afterward, I went to have tea with friends. They dropped me off at the entrance to the underground lot where my car was parked, around midnight. As I walked down the ramp, I noticed my Toyota was the only car in the lot.

As I walked further underground, I began hearing footsteps behind me, many many footsteps. As someone who has been through a brutal rape, I was stone terrified. My car was too far away to run to. The footsteps quickened. Inside, I heard a quiet voice, "Turn around and face your fear." And I had no choice. So, as I stood at the bottom of the ramp in the night, I turned, trying not to faint, trying to keep my wits about me.

And there they were. The chanting monks. All 13 of them. They came down and surrounded me, talking over each other, smiling, patting me on the arms and shoulders. They were happy to see me, because in their tours they rarely got to speak with individual people. We stood there talking (as though my weak knees would have allowed me to move) for quite some time, and then they gave me a package of incense and a tape of their chanting. At some point, I noticed the van they were headed toward. They all walked me to my car and helped me into it.

And so I say to you, my friends, please, for the love of god, turn around and face your fears. What awaits you cannot possibly be worse than those phantoms you are frightening yourselves with.

©2008 by Mugsy Peabody. All world rights reserved.

Note: You can hear the monks, Ravi Shakar, and others chanting the age-old om mane padme hung at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vjg5hU3MfIw&feature=related. If you would like to learn more about the Cambodian Genocide, please consult the Yale University Cambodian Genocide Project at: http://www.yale.edu/cgp.

More from Piedmont Avenue.....

Most folks, when they think of Piedmont Avenue, envision something like Mille Fiori, a flower stand which has been on the Avenue since I moved here nearly 30 years ago. An area of “cute shops,” “great places to eat,” the home of Fenton’s ice creamery and Piedmont Theatre, L’Amyx Tea Bar and the Piedmont Grocery. For me, it is more multifaceted. When I go for my walk, I so often find another, far more interesting, textured community. I've included a slideshow of photos from walks on the Avenue. If anyone knows who the kid dancing in the window of Ferrari's is, please email me! I love it that my neighbors are the sort who leave out shoes for the homeless; quite often I find shoes, jackets, or other warm apparel for them. Free books are left on top of the return bins at the branch Library on 41st Street. Often the restaurants in the area leave bags of bread, bagels or muffins on top of newsracks for those without food.

The sidewalk and pavement pieces interest me because I'm always fascinated by what we "set in stone" when we have the opportunity. I think it speaks well of my neighbors that one choose to memorialize a complex symbol of love, and someone else cut Lewis Carroll/ Jefferson Airplane/ Grace Slick into concrete. All best to that impulse! (Production Notes: The "headless horseman" shot was made with my Samsung telephone at La Baja Taqueria, a place dedicated to Jerry Garcia, replete with original posters from the Hashbury 1960s. (BTW, Baja Taqueria has a great little Bluegrass jam from 8-10 every Monday night, hosted by Tom Lucas. No cover.) Although the quality as a photo is not to the standard I hold for myself, the painterly quality makes it somewhat more interesting, and in the spirit of the grateful dead, may they all rest in peace. The others were made using a Nikon digital.)

Piedmont Avenue Tales

Like the storied path to Canterbury, Piedmont Avenue, Oakland, is a street of dreams. They all come here, alone or in company, on foot, in a car, on the bus, or pedaling a bike. In the end, it is a street everyone travels, whether the workers from Kaiser Permanente’s MacArthur/ Broadway facility, the bankers, shopkeepers, lawyers and dentists, acupuncturists and chiropractors who work on the street, or the musicians, writers, and artists who spring forth whole from California College of the Arts. With its wide vistas, deep grass, and old-growth trees, Mountain View Cemetery, at the end of the Avenue, is our park of choice for walking the dog, portrait photography, or a simple Sunday morning stroll. The Cemetery was designed 140 years ago by Frederick Law Olmsted, who also designed Central Park.

Like Chaucer’s pilgrims to Canterbury, they each have their own errands, dropping their kids off at St. Leo’s and Piedmont Elementary, stopping at Peet’s for coffee or a burrito at La Baja Taqueria, hitting the ATMs at Wells Fargo or Citibank, getting their hair cut or their toes painted, or just enjoying a quiet lunch at Bay Wolf, Cesars or Ninna’s. Walking, talking, enjoying the sun until they resume the chores of their days.

One such pilgrim was my neighbor Earl, a retired Navy guy and actor who was the only person I ever knew who actually ran away with the circus. He was an “advance man” for a mudshow, so he disappeared on us for the summer each and every year, to travel from small town to town, meeting the Rotary and Masons, Eastern Star and scout masters across the Midwest and South. He would rent the field, arrange the licenses and permits, oversee the printed posters and advertising; he was also in charge of the folks who sold tickets from phone banks. In the fall, he’d come back, full of stories as a ripe cob is crowded with kernels of corn.

One story Earl told which still haunts me is about the day in a small town in Alabama when the lion got out of his cage into a fairground full of people enjoying the sun along the midway.

I’ll always see him in my mind’s eye, leaning back in his chair at the dinner table, soaking in our eager attention, pausing and grinning to build suspense, a natural actor and storyteller.

“In the mess tent, when word came,” he said, “they left their forks hanging in mid-air. Every man, woman, and child of any age knew it was their duty to put their bodies between the animals and the paying customers.”

He looked at each of us, the drama of the moment sinking in. “They ran to their quarters and grabbed sheets, table cloths, towels, blankets, capes, any large piece of fabric.” We leaned forward, food and drink forgotten, scarcely breathing.

“The lion tamer grabbed a fork, and took the biggest raw steak he could find out of the ice box. They all ran across the fair grounds, from all directions, until they finally caught up with the errant cat. Then, the tamer began walking backward, the steak extended on the fork. The troop aligned themselves on both sides, in a row, forming two walls of fabric.”

He wet his throat and rinsed his teeth with his wine. His lady Shirley chimed in, “Cats can’t tell the difference between cloth and a solid wall.”

He studied her face before going on, in that way that people have who’ve been together for a very long time. “Oh, did you want to tell the story?" She didn’t respond.

”As the tamer and the lion passed, they would run to the head of the line, holding up their fabric, and so on and so on, a moving wall of cloth, shielding the public from the cat, the cat from the public, until, finally, they reached the lion’s cage, where the tamer tossed the steak inside. The cat lumbered up the steps, and they locked the door behind him.”

Shared silence. Hairs on the arms beginning to lie down again. Second coffees and the lovely banana cream pie Shirley had baked were handed round.

Good people around the table, great stories of brick-and-mortar life, a home-baked pie, the cat on the window sill taking it all in, while we pondered how it would be to live in a community where we knew our duty so absolutely that we would leave our forks hanging in the air when called to fill it.

Note: The website for Mountain View Cemetery is www.mountainviewcemetery.org for those interested in this fascinating place.)

©2008 by Mugsy Peabody. All world rights reserved.