I Want to Hold your Hand

I want to hold your hand. I want to give you hope. I want to remind you of the strength you have that has kept you alive and productive your whole life. I want to tell you how much you mean to me. I want to thank you for the beauty you create and generate in this world. I want to take you on a mental vacation, so you can rest and repair and relax. Smile.

I want to make you laugh, tell you a joke. Here’s one. A guy is sitting at home when he hears a knock at the door. He opens the door and sees a snail on the porch. He picks up the snail and throws it as far as he can.
Three years later, there is a knock on the door. He opens it and sees the same snail. The snail says, "What the hell was that all about?"

I want to honor your intelligence and appreciate the small things you do everyday that go unnoticed like making dinner, doing the laundry, taking care of the children, the elders, the animals.

I want to dance around the room with you, play games, swim in the river, dip our toes in the ocean. I want to remind you to rest, take a nap if you can. Sing loud in the car because when I drive by you, it’ll make me laugh. I want you to know that singing helps your spleen and balances the left right hemispheres of your brain. I want to encourage you to hold a baby, visit an elder and tell them a story.

I want to thank you for taking care of yourself. I want to acknowledge how much you contribute to community, all the events, gardens, meals, festivals, celebrations, concerts, benefits and fairs that bring us all together to enjoy our time together. I want you to know that inspite of all the terrible awful things going on in the world that there is most definitely and surely good news. Here’s some of the headlines from the Positive News out OF Bolinas CA. American Indians Granted $760 million in a class action lawsuit settlement. Teachers without Borders connecting teachers Globally to make changes locals. Slow Food movement saves a Vermont. President Obama meets with 11 young climate activists. Huge Palm Oil Company in Indonesia promises to End Deforestation and 12 year old food grower Katie Tagliano from south Carolina donates 2 tons of vegetables to homeless

I want to tell you a story about a guy who photographs individuals who normally go unseen, enlarges them to extreme gigantic sizes and plasters them to buildings to surprise and enlighten neighborhoods devastated by war, crime and poverty. His name is JR and his the winner of the 2011 TED Prize which operates under the concept; one wish to change the world. One of JR’s most recent projects was to photograph Israelis and Palestinians in the same occupations, Taxi drivers, chefs, teachers, army and to put their photos side by side on the Walls which separate the two people. This artistic action has opened so many minds to the idea that we’re not that different.

Help others.org has a smile deck that you electronically shuffle and are given instructions for actions of kindness. Clubs are for people you know, hearts are for strangers, diamonds are acts for yourself and spades are for the world. This is a terrific exercise and could be contagious.

These are just a few of the sentiments and stories that are happening at this very moment in our world. The stories that never make the front page or even the last. The stories that we don’t see on TV or hear on the mainstream radio. We are a planet of 7 billion mostly good people and it is our daily interactions, of Art, compassion, love, kindness and simplicity that very much deserve our attention. We deserve to hear it, integrate it and spread it around. Here’s a challenge. See how long you can hold a smile without laughing. Pass it on.

You can finds links to these stories at my website. Sherryglaser.net

The Age of Surveillence

If I saw one police car yesterday, I saw a hundred. We were driving up from the Bay Area and it appeared that every couple of miles on 101 there was a cop sitting and watching or actually in the process of harassing or arresting someone or worse. The same was true in Ukiah, 253, and Boonville and the 128. Even though I wasn’t doing anything wrong, I had that uncomfortable feeling that I was going to get in trouble any minute. Know what I mean?

It feels like there’s somebody always watching. It’s the age of surveillance. Surveillance comes from the French and it means, watching over. I wish it were that benign. For we watch over our grandchildren when they are close to the waters’ edge or climbing on the monkey bars. I certainly wouldn’t say they are under surveillance, but I’m not in France. Surveillance is huge business right now. There are thousands of cameras mounted in cities and towns all over country. In the UK there are more cameras than there are citizens. In fact, George Orwells’ house is surrounded by 32 cameras, Don’t you just love the irony. He’s dead, but still, big brother is watching

Yes, They are watching us, but not with the benevolent eyes of grandmothers, but with the prying, invasive eyes of officials waiting to detain, question and invade our privacy. We have practically given them carte blanche to do this in the form of our social networking. We generously divulge our family’s faces, habits, whereabouts in our innocence and belief that only our friends are being informed, but in our heart of hearts we know, this is public space and whatever we post is permanent, indelible ink.

According to wikipedia, they are listening as well. Remember "Hepting v. AT&T . This was United States class action lawsuit filed in 2006 by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) AT&T, in which the EFF alleged that AT&T permitted and assisted the National Security Agency (NSA) in unlawfully monitoring the communications of the AT&T customers, businesses and third parties whose communications were routed through AT&T's network, as well as telephone calls routed via the Internet". But the case was dismissed and to this day if ATT and the NSA consider us suspects they have warantless access to our daytime and nocturnal transmissions.

In the beginning of our democracy we were protected by the Bill of rights and the 4^th amendment which guards against unreasonable searches and seizures, along with requiring any warrant to be judicially sanctioned and supported by probable cause. But this lofty ideal has been whittled away ever so diligently by our previous presidents, and the current one has done nothing to restore privacy in any way.

Privacy is a thing of the past especially at airport security. Not only does the TSA rifle through our sex toys, prescriptions and valuables in our luggage, but now they have the right to look through our clothes, under our underwear and even through our skin. At this point we still have the option to opt out, but that gets you a public molestation which is humiliating and ineffective.

Take me for instance. I have an extremely large bosom. And although I’ve been felt up a number of times by TSA agents, they never really get under my breasts. Let’s assume it’s modesty, or perhaps ignorance about how much storage space is available to me. I know that if I want to smuggle a small child on the plane I could.

But here’s my point; Flying in a plane, Using a social network, or texting on a cell phone is a choice that some of us make in spite of the risk. But when it comes to installation smart meters it appears we have no choice. It is the intention of PGE as an agent of the PUC with the help of a company known as Wellington to install smart meters against the will of the people in California and in our case in direct violation of the decision of the Mendocino Board of Supervisors to Ban these meters. In fact it is also in violation of the Precautionary principle that as a county we also put into effect especially when it comes to health threats, the kind that have been documented in coordination with the installation of electronic meters.

These meters are designed to hook up with our smart appliances. Yes, the ones that I bought thinking I was being responsible and more energy efficient. Yet, it was all a precursor to this. Smart Meters use A remote electromagnetic frequency that zaps our nervous system and watches over our appliances and electric usage, reporting back to PG&E information about our private lives

On the other hand with all our nifty devices we are watching them too. We are recording, downloading, sharing, organizing and getting our communities and attorneys in gear.

Just watch us.

We declare Sovereignty

As we see the August 2nd deadline looming and the two parties feuding regarding the US debt ceiling we realize that our government is not so much in the business of conducting business, but in the business of waste, lies obfuscations, and destruction of the lives of Americans and immigrants who have worked so hard to make this country a beautiful productive and successful place. For it is on the backs of these working people that the billionaires have made their fortunes and incurred this unfathomable debt. This fact is never mentioned when discussing taxing the rich and that without the poor there would be no rich and without the wars there would be little debt. I have said, a general strike would be an excellent tonic for this nation Like they do in Europe the working class comes out in mass and refuses to participate and hold up the crumbling infrastructure if even for a day. For until then, mass consciousness will remain mired in the thinking that power is in the hands of the few rather than the many because in truth without us they are nothing.

We discussed these very urgent issues last week in syncopation with the 4^th of July celebrations at the Mendopendence conference. Local folks gathered a the Mendocino recreation center in response to a call from the new director of the Mendocino Environmental Center Justin Calvino and his co-worker Sarah Bodnar in an effort to define and declare sovereignty. Much of the panel discussions over the weekend focused on the very question "What is Sovereignty?" The most common definition was “control over local resources, including media, education, energy, food, security, jobs, and health”. We have long relied on the federal government to provide us these things and at the same time we are subject to their mood swings and strange unpredictable behaviors.

Let’s take health care for example. For so long we have been begging the government to provide us with Universal health care and what we got was not. I know there have been “improvements” like the fact that insurance providers can no longer deny coverage to a patient with preexisting conditions or the fact that you can keep your children on your policy until they are 26, bravo. But how much does it cost us and what kind of health care are they providing? Well, we rank 38^th in care in the world behind Costa Rica, Chile, Denmark, etc. Most people I know that find themselves in the maze of American Healthcare get a lot sicker before they get better, if they ever get better.

In a state of sovereignty we create a local system of healthcare that sustains our health and prevents disease rather than being dependent on a system tends to be dangerous and near collapse. We have a treasure of natural remedies and herbs growing wild here in Mendocino County that could keep a majority of us in good health for a long time. Last week on Holistic Healing Perspectives we were informed about Kangen water systems that transform our water from an acidic or neutral PH to a Base PH. Listeners chimed in on how miraculously the water changed their lives for the better. Marijuana, is a locally grown medicine and is also a proven anti depressant and pain manager. From the sea we have a valuable resource in iodine rich seaweed a definite protection against free floating radiation.

In fared Saunas are also a huge health benefit and relieve symptoms of fibromyalgia, arthritis, high blood pressure, and many other ailments. Sovereignty advises that we as a community invest in this kind of infrastructure.

We discussed the power grid and a way to generate our own electricity from the Sun, wind and perhaps biomass. As we see the unemployment rate climb we need ask ourselves what kind of industries can we create? What are our assets? What are our talents? For it is not the government or the billionaires that will provide it is we, ourselves.

Of course I dream of President Obama walking out to that bully pulpit to announce a new WPA works progress administration like the one created in 1939 by FDR employing millions of unskilled workers to carry out public works projects,^[1] including the construction of public buildings and roads, and operated large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects. It fed children and redistributed food, clothing, and housing. Almost every community in the United States had a park, bridge or school constructed by the agency, which especially benefited rural and Western areas. Yes, that would be on the heels of him writing an executive order rescinding all tax breaks for anyone who makes over a million dollars a year a removing subsides for things like 126 million dollars from the Horse racing industry. 3 billion in irrigation subsides that provide our nations fast food French fries, or making a change in the the Mining Law of 1872, which regulates the extraction of hardrock minerals Since 1872, land and mineral values have risen considerably.. Between $2 billion and $4 billion worth of royalty-free minerals are extracted each year from public lands, it estimates. But I fear Mr. Obama will do no such thing. He appears to be another puppet on a string. The time has come my friends for us to claim sovereignty and you can do so at the mendopendence website.www.mendopendence.com'