"Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross national product ... if we should judge America by that - counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

"Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans."

Robert F. Kennedy Address, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, March 18, 1968

"You must be the change you want to see in the world."
- Mahatma Gandhi

Imitation of Christ

From the Rawganique ezine

A fun-filled week in Michigan, with the Kalamazoo Activists preceded my adventure with the United States Criminal Justice System. A week spent in the town that serves as a base for the companies Upjohn Pharmacia/Monsanto, leaders in Bio-technologies, a town with its vibrant Community Gardens projects adding to the rising consciousness visible throughout the town with people of all ages joining together with efforts to educate and participate in the transformation towards a sustainable culture. I had been on the train for a day, traveling across the country to Portland, Oregon, chatting with other passengers about current social and ecological issues, when the train stopped somewhere in Montana. Now, a cage or two may have been rattled, as not all participants in the conversation were in alignment with some of the subject matter. Information regarding the Hemp Industry, Organic Farming, the Raw Food Diet, Cob Housing, Bio-technologies, Slavery, Deep Ecology, Medical Marijuana, mass-consumption and over population etc. was a challenge for some. So there was a "buzz" in the air when the Border Patrol officer walked into the carriage and headed directly to me and asked to check my ID. Whoops! I had violated my immigration status and would have to be escorted off the train. Handcuffed and relieved of my bags, i was driven to the local county jail, fingerprinted, photographed and locked in a cell. Inside one of my bags i carried a supply of clean spring water and organic food. When asked if i may consume some of my own supplies i was denied and the option of a less pure water source was offered. I politely declined, stating my preference for clean personal and planetary health.

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“If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea”  ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery  

"You just imagine and that's it. That's how you get fun".

Paddy, aged 4.75, with an old plastic slide, an old sprinkler, in 110F weather.

"The gross and net result of it is that people who spent most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over the rocky roadsteads of this parish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycle as a result of the interchanging of the atoms of each of them and you would be surprised at the number of people in these parts who are nearly half people and half bicycles...when a man lets things go so far that he is more than half a bicycle, you will not see him so much because he spends a lot of his time leaning with one elbow on walls or standing propped by one foot at kerbstones."

Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman

"The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor.”
-Voltaire