a groundhogs day leter (the personal is political)

02/02/2008

Dear Friends

February 2nd comes around again, so again I am writing my annual Groundhogs day comments. We a re already a month and a half from the solstice, and equally far from the solar calendars marking of spring.

This letter will include a bit of my life, and then my thoughts on the world.

My life:

A year ago I started a new job, working with a doctor with a holistic practice with a focus that I usually refer to as nutritional medicine. The basic approach of what we do is two fold. We identify and try to eliminate nutritional problems such as food allergies, microbial overgrowths, and poor dietary patterns and choices. We also recommend natural and generally nutrient based supplements that support our patients' internal biological processes. This approach is often called functional medicine. We are an integrative practice, meaning that we also use conventional medications when it makes sense. OK that's not all that we do but it gives you an accurate general picture. The job has been a thrill in terms of all I have learned and am still learning.

My family is strong. Beth and I work well with each other and our love continues to deepen. The struggle is finding time together alone. Teo is now in first grade and Zev is in third grade, they both attend the city's "open school". It's not exactly Summerhill, http://www.summerhillschool.co.uk/ but the students do get to make choices about their studies, and generally our kids like it. As the boys grow their personalities also flourish. There was a time when I couldn't tell if differences between them were just related to differences in age, but more and more I appreciate their unique personalities and interests. That said, they are still such good friends, and they both amaze me some times with their kindness to each other and to others.

I continue to enjoy my close association with the cooperative house next door. We share cooking and meals, and meetings, and community. Coop living reminds me that utopia is a constant dinner party. I often live close to utopia.

My year was punctuated by what are becoming somewhat regular events. I had the good fortune to attend 3 co-counseling workshops including a trip to New York and a trip to Vermont (co-counseling http://www.cci-usa.org/ is a peer based emotional support process that I have been involved with for several years now). In November our family went to the demonstration against the School of the Americas http://www.soaw.org/type.php?type=8 at Fort Benning in Georgia. This is an annual action to try to close Americas military training camp for Latin American military personal who too often go on to commit atrocities against their people. Since my parents and sister live in Atlanta the trip is also a good opportunity to visit them.

I went to seminars in San Antonio, in Pittsburg. If I'm going to tally up all my travels, I was in Toledo on Election Day, helping Obama take Ohio. This year included more travel than typical for me.

I was modestly involved with the Obama Campaign, in addition to dragging a couple of friends to Toledo to knock on door, I registered a handful of people to vote, shuffled some papers for canvassing packets and did some door knocking in Ann Arbor to clarify where likely Obama voters lived.

This fall I've found my way a bit more on to the internet. In November I started to blog http://gaiaonpolitics.blogspot.com/ I'm trying to post something every week or so. The energy the blog takes probably exceeds the influence it has, but it's a good way to work on my writing. I always enjoy when people comment on my blog, so if your there leave your two cents. I've also started playing around with facebook. (if your on facebook but not connected to me, please look me up)

The World:

Things are not really improving yet but at least the potential for things to improve has improved.

I worked (to the extent that I did) to get Obama elected so that we would again have a US president who would listen to progressive perspective, and so that grassroots political action would again have some force.

In this first few weeks of the new administration some good thing have happened perhaps most important an order to close Guantanamo and the secrete CIA prisons. But the order hasn't been carried out yet. We will get plans from the generals regarding withdrawal from Iraq, and a man known to successfully negotiate peace is now the US Middle East Special envoy. Again encouraging but still peace is not yet here. It's hard to imagine that the US will change it's relationship to Israel, last year funding the Israeli military at 2.4 billion dollars. It's scheduled to increase to 3.1 billion in the next 10 years http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33222.pdf . At least a more engaged policy will likely cut down of the violence. Some bad things have continues, for instance, drone planes attacking Pakistan, this being particularly troubling because it continues a policy of preemptive attacks. War is the greatest moral scourge that we face.

At what point does a recession become a depression? And how much can a stimulus packet do? I am glad that there are some funds for green energy, medical record technology may improve the quality of care, and certain infrastructure work is probably worthwhile. I'm not in favor of lots of road work. We need to be moving away from our car and long distance transport oriented culture. While financial approaches to help forestall the mortgage crisis will help people in need, I'd rather see legal approaches to preventing foreclosures. However one chooses to describe our economy it represents the greatest immediate challenge that we face.

I still hold to the understanding that in the big picture the two biggest problems we humans face are the running down of liquid fuel related to peak oil production http://www.postcarbon.org/ and global climate change. As we pass the point of maximum oil production most of the assumptions of modern society will need to be reworked. It is hard to imagine that we will be able to have an economy that continues to assume unlimited growth (and in turn ongoing profits from that growth) since cheep fuel has been the lynch pin for perpetual growth. Those expecting profits will try various destructive strategies. They will try to extract more from the poor, those least able to defend themselves, and to turn to all other energy sources including coal. Coal, of course, contributes to global warming (if clean coal technology is anything more than science fiction it is still costly, and no strategy for profit maximization.)

Solutions may be available, the question is implementation. For instance wind power is an increasingly hopeful alternative energy source but present global production of wind energy amounts to about 1.5 percent of the worlds total electricity production. It has increased by about 30% every year for the last 10 years. By one scenario 50% of the world electricity could be generated by renewable sources by 2017 http://www.wwindea.org/home/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=224&Itemid=40 . And then there is the need for an electric vehicle fleet…

Politically the capital of the US is not the only place were progressive governments are on the rise. Two days ago Bolivia approved a new constitution by popular vote re establishes water access as a right, and gives national control to natural resources (Bolivia holds over half of the worlds lithium, needed for lithium ion batteries). Amazingly, Obama has congratulated Bolivia for the passing of this constitution.

Yesterday I went to a meeting of grassroots community activists discussing the situation in Gaza. What was inspiring about the meeting was the sense that again there was space for activist movements to grow.

There are also structural forces that oppose change, but even they are changing. Chaos can be the prelude to an emerging, at first hardly perceivable system that is growing up along side the collapsing monolith. Change can some times happen quickly. Problems persist, but we can begin to vision a better world, yes another world is possible, increasingly more possible, and in that things look much more promising.

With love and growth,

Gaia