On Voting Day for Congressional seats I am thinking about a famous line from Gandhi speaking to his British oppressors: 10,000 British cannot keep 100 million Indians down.

So, as we expect the $billions of the Koch brothers’ war chest and other Super PAC contributors to influence the makeup of Congress, I say to them: 100 of America’s wealthiest barons and baronettes cannot keep down 350 million American citizens for very long.

And I am speaking to both political parties.

Our nation–this dream of democracy–is less than 300 years old. Most of the governments of the world are thousands of years old. Think of that: we are still newcomers and the dream is still being tested.

The essence of our internal battle is caused by an economic system without democratic guidance within it, to restrain its inherent greed. Capitalism produces poverty and social divide without the good sense and moral restraint on those with the greatest wealth. There is nothing to stop market forces from impoverishing the majority while a minority reaps the harvest of billions.

*The difference now is that among the “people” with the greatest wealth are corporations, considered persons with individual rights per the unfortunate Supreme Court ruling in 2010, Citizen’s United vs. the Federal Campaign Commission. In trying to sort out whether Michael Moore’s film Fahrenheit 911 and Citizen’s United’s Hilary: The Movie were of similar nature, the court ruled that nonprofit organizations can contribute to political campaigns. The way the law came down and is interpreted resulted in nonprofit organizations not required to fully disclose their donors, so that U.S. citizens do not know who is influencing their opinions (through advertisements and videos and news services).

The truly hurtful aspect of the Citizen’s United ruling is a political system now infused with corporate funding that is influencing supposedly free elections. This one ruling wounded the democratic body more than any I can think of in my lifetime as an American. The question is, Is this a mortal wound?

Wealth has degraded our schools and our free press through privatization of public services: the worship of free markets, which as I’ve written above, are without any moral restraints.

So as we watch the voting returns tonight, let us remember that democratic forces are not at work in the results, no matter which side of the Congressional Isle wins. What we will watch is the result of Big Money influencing how citizens cast a ballot.

Without the vigilance of citizens who can think independently, we’ll have a “bought” election every election now. This is now very difficult to achieve without a free press and with every avenue of communication bought and sold by big corporations.

Don’t be naive. Our opinions are being shaped by those forces every day, every hour that we are online, listening to news, or reading newspapers. Until we remove corporate power from our voting and free press and schools, we are an oppressed people under the rule of entities whose names are not even available to us.

Our fledgling democracy is under assault. The first thing we must do is to think and vote independently. The second is to defeat Citizen’s United. Turn off your TV.

A beauty salon is a species phenomenon where conversation ranges from the benign to profound. Women and men find refuge under the warm flow of water, a rigorous scalp massage, fragrances of foam and cream. It’s time out with the conversation running this way and that, like rain water flowing over pebbles. In this “space” I recently heard a story which on the face of it seemed quite hilarious, making many within earshot howl. But as the story filtered through my consciousness it became profoundly sad.

The beautician was a twenty-something mom who described her childhood as “growing up in the safety of urban neighborhoods with houses, fences, and lawns.”

She and her husband and twins daughters moved into a new house near Big Lagoon State Park near Perdido Key on the Gulf of Mexico. Their home backed onto the state park. Apparently the previous owner had befriended a stray cat who literally came with the house when ownership changed hands. So the new family kept feeding the critter leaving bowls of cat food and fresh water on the back porch.

The first morning she opened the back door and screamed bloody murder. In front of her was the “biggest rat I have ever seen in my life.” Turns-out it was a possum helping itself to the cat food. She begged her husband to shoot it.

Later that month her husband left for his annual deer hunt in Alabama. Our storyteller described their cul-de-sac as a wilderness outpost. One night when she ventured out to empty the garbage, she noticed a hulking form creep across the lawn and assumed it was human, coming to steal, rape, and pillage. Frantically she gathered her kids in her bedroom and called her husband who was in the woods drinking beer around a fire about 300 miles due west. He told her to call the police. When she peered out from the darkened room, the moonlight revealed the intruder to be a large deer. Her husband broke into laughter. “I should have stayed home,” he exclaimed.

An ongoing problem was a raccoon who had taken up residence in the garage, fattened by the excellent fare left for the cat. It displayed a brazen attitude of entitlement, often lounging on its side on the cool cement floor. Not only did it not budge when she screamed at it, but stared unabashedly at her, rolling over on its back like a dog.

“These animals have no fear!” she said. “Our yard and house have become their habitat. They are so used to all the people at the park they are not afraid and they expect to be fed.”

The pièce de résistance was the discovery of a Florida Beach Mouse in her dryer exhaust. The beach mouse is infamous on Perdido Key, having blocked development by virtue of designation as an endangered species. Florida’s barrier islands are at risk from encroachment of sea water and the beach mouse turns out to be a key member of the habitat community that preserves the dune grasses which hold the sand in place.

“The beach mouse is not endangered,” she exhorted, “its taken up residence here…how did it get here?”

“Probably rode the drift wood over the Big Lagoon after Hurricane Ivan,” offered the lady getting her hair tinted golden blond.

Displaced, dispossessed, endangered—human, animal, and plant species are just trying to survive in urban environments where cat food is the fare and relationships askew.

The salon may yet prove to be fertile ground for research on modernity.

Photo from Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission

I am adding a recent TED ED – PBS program, “Unstoppable Learning,” which includes four researchers in the field of learning. I recommend that you get a cup of coffee or tea and sit down and listen all the way through. Education is undergoing radical transformation as new research is directing experts and parents and hopefully some day, educators, to bring education into the 21st Century:

TED Radio Hour 

And here is a play list of 10 educational TED talks which explore more of what we are discovering how children learn and where is education going:

Ten Educational Talks

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How we understand the learning process is evolving in tandem with cognitive and brain research in the 21st century. These studies are causing many educators and psychologists to rethink public education. What is being discovered has real implications for environmental educators and anyone concerned with the development of generations of ecologically attuned individuals.

New developmental and cognitive science research points to the role of play, music, movement, story telling and memory as fundamental to intelligence, resiliency, and creativity. What we have typically thought of as enriching the creative, spiritual life of individuals has direct correlates with development of higher cognitive skills.

Adele Diamond was recently interviewed by Krista Tippet on OnBeing.org. Diamond is a cognitive scientists. Listen to what she has learned about developing the prefrontal cortex – the newest area in human brain evolution – and seat of our highest brain function.

Diamond describes how play, movement, and creative contexts for learning develop important skills that students will need in the 21st century. Cultural traditions are also being studied for their role in higher learning skills. She gives the example of the traditional talking stick and circle used by indigenous cultures. By promoting listening and delayed responses (discernment and judgement), children learn skills that promote better friendships and relationships  based on recall of experiences during the listening process. Spiritual teachers might call this development of attention. These traditional methods can be incorporated into classroom activities. In a time when our emphasis is on learning content (to pass the national standards tests) we have cut out the most important learning tools (art, music, physical exercise, play, and time for exploration). What we need to develop Diamond refers to as executive functions. These are mediated in the prefrontal cortex.

Time in nature is also important to brain development as explored by Richard Louv.

Nature Deficit Disorder is a condition Louv identified in children who spend inordinate amounts of time indoors, usually on electronic devices, rather than spending time in a natural environment with all its sensory stimulation, exercise, play, beauty, and opportunities for observation.

The Dalai Lama’s Mind and Life Institute invited experts and spiritual leaders to reflect on this new science of learning. Listen to the sessions on Mind, Brain, and Matter. In the discussions the scientific method of inquiry was compared with typical Buddhist inquiry methodology. These sessions are lengthy but very rich. I suggest that you take each one as an opportunity to relax on your couch or easy chair and give it your whole attention.

From the Center for Humans and Nature, an interview with Lauret Savoy in which she asks us to look more deeply into what it means to be a citizen of this country– not just a political belonging but something much greater. In particular, where does slavery, or injustice or exclusion fit into Leopold’s perceptions about a Land Ethic? Savoy recently edited a book, The Colors of Nature, with Alison Deming.

Amazon Book Review: From African American to Asian American, indigenous to immigrant, “multiracial” to “mixedblood,” the diversity of cultures in this world is matched only by the diversity of stories explaining our cultural origins: stories of creation and destruction, displacement and heartbreak, hope and mystery.

Just two weeks ago I left full time work to begin a new phase of working for myself, part time, and on a rolling schedule that includes exercise, writing, better eating, and…time to notice the little life dramas around me.

Yesterday a swallowtail landed on my parsley plant, which has flowered on long stalks. She stayed there for several hours moving from flowering head to flowering head and glued an egg under many flowerlets. Over night these are now 1/8″ larvae who will devour the entire bush over several weeks becoming plump and long. When they’ve eaten it all up, they will find a place to suspend themselves and proceed to pupate. The dry cast looks dead but later on it will be empty. The new butterfly emerges and flits away. This occurred last year on the same bush. I thought I would have to replant the parsley but instead it came resoundingly back, seemingly refreshed, and lasted all fall and through the Florida winter.

I have also noticed on the basil (grown from last year’s harvested seeds) a big beautiful bumblebee busily drinking from each little white bloom on the flowering stalks. I picked some shiny, broad basil leaves for my sister but the bee seemed unconcerned in his haste to drink it all.

These little dramas in the lives of other species happened atop the Bay Oaks condominiums in my potted garden.  Not only do I enjoy providing habitat for my fellow lifers but I love picking fresh herbs for meals. A neighbor suggested that I put fresh basil or rosemary in my iced water and Presto! I had a new refreshing drink.

I wonder, would I have noticed these little life dramas had I been rushing to and from work; would they have happened while I was shut in a building with no ambient light or air?

Read more: http://inspirational-poems.net/butterfly-poems/361-caterpillar-to-butterfly#ixzz37pzcQn1f

Working on a new essay about Wakulla Springs I happened upon a series of the best natural and cultural history videos of the Wakulla Springs in Florida. Wakulla Springs is one of the world’s largest artesian springs and part  of an underground freshwater network underlying Florida.

In these short videos you will learn about wildlife, the purchase of the springs and building of the famous lodge, the Hollywood movies, Army’s maneuvers there during the war years, and incredible views of wildlife–better than any I have seen before.

Each of the 5 minute videos (habitat, bird life, development – includes incredible footage of the lodge fire, military maneuvers, and Hollywood films from Tarzan to The Creature from the Black Lagoon, to Airport 77, and archaeology of the springs, diving and underwater life)are superbly crafted.

Staying at the Wakulla Springs Lodge is a true Florida experience.

Check it out.

In October of 2004 four friends and I arrived in Anchorage, Alaska for a five-day backcountry trek before attending the North American Association for Environmental Education Annual Conference. The five of us were serving as environmental educators in various capacities and we all lived in the desert. So, naturally we anticipated freezing to death and had each spent hundreds of dollars at REI outfitting ourselves for the Alaskan fall weather. Stepping from the plane, we were relieved and surprised by balmy fifty-five degree air! A burly-faced Alaskan explained it was the Pineapple Express—an occasional trade-wind from the Hawaiian Islands that “takes a hard left up the Pacific coast” and blows tropical breezes over the Alaskan archipelago and beyond.

We rented a van in Anchorage after settling in at a comfortable hostel at $25 per night. Leaving behind the confining spaces of our respective workplaces, our female energy, like water, ran free, gurgling here and there. We began a woman’s journey as rich and multilayered as an ancient Tell with its visible present and deeper layers of forgotten pasts. Over five days we melded into a mobile community, sharing deeper aspects of our lives in a natural setting like no other. Along the way other women crossed our path whose life stories fit like colorful pieces in a hologram.

Journal Entry:
Rain makes popping sounds on our water proof gear, spills down slender Aspen trunks, and makes rivulets between tangled roots that crisscross the trail. Our voices like wood winds – a light rolling melody – play in the silent woods. Around us streams and rivers pour forth pewter-gray waters. [Earlier the ranger explained that Alaska’s glaciers are retreating in the global warming of the Earth, the glacial silt freed in heavy liquid flows.]

Our jackets make colorful splashes of orange, aqua, and sky-blue in the misty green of the forest. White-trunked beech with fall’s last yellow leaves still clinging to their branches, drop a soft, yellow carpet on the earth. We are alert to the presence of grizzlies. One impaled a red salmon from the river with a long, sharp claw at the entrance to the trailhead where the ranger reflected that as far as he knew grizzlies had never attacked a group of five or more. Grrreeeaat, we mumbled. Someone makes a joke about entering the food chain. I am not amused. We come upon a steaming pile of grizzly scat. I am looking behind me often.

We search for velvet brown moose passing behind dense trees up ahead and chat excitedly like kids let out of a school house for recess. Far from our desks piled high with projects, notes, and timelines, far from incessant e-mail and the glow of computer screens we begin a new rhythm.

Up from black stones – Alaska’s bones – emanates a deep vibration, slow and strong, retraining our erratic energies. With the gentle wash of a steady light rain, our false identities drain away. We are swept away in the beauty and rawness of the landscape and the wild creatures that still walk its paths and swim its waters in fair abundance.

The following day we leave the Eagle Pass area where we had hiked seven miles in back country to learn that a photographer and his girl friend were attacked and killed by two grizzlies. The incident happened only a few miles from where we had been hiking. This dramatically confirmed for me that nature does not have our plans in mind as she moves in her mysterious ways. The incident stayed with me the whole ten days we were in Alaska and forever imprinted on my mind that wildness is not a fuzzy bear to play with or a player in our imagined destinies. They are simply in their own homes and they are predators.

Alaska Lesson #1…Lesson #2 came that next week when I listened to scientists from Yellowstone National Park describe the role of top predators in the health of ecosystems based on what they were learning from wolf reintroduction in the Park. These are the bookends then of the human struggle to be safe, to protect livelihood while giving space to bears, cougars, and coyotes.

Alaska presses on the chest with its wild power – though diminished, still vital and instructive.

The word dad is said to originate from baby talk, dada, as does mom from mama. What’s more, these words occur across languages and cultures. They must derive from some ancient root that expresses itself in our babyhood as language emerges.

I am not sure when I began to speak, or call my Dad, dada or daddy. I do, however, remember when my own children began to call their dad “dada”. They were both very little and it was about the time they began to try to walk–as they were about to step into the big wide world.

Dads are funny, magical creatures who can sometimes appear as giants and other times as teddy bears.  They smell different than mom. Little girls remember their aftershave and boys remember their sweat.

My dad was gone a lot as a military man. Whenever he was home it was a celebration. He called us four girls and mom his “harem.” I remember how he complained he could never get into the bathroom. Back in the 50s houses had only one. There was always one of us primping in with the door locked. When he did get in he had to wade through our lingerie drying on every hook. His complaints were all in good fun. We all loved him dearly and we preened over him when he would let us. My older sister Bev and I scrambled to be the one to bring him his pipe or a cup of coffee.

All I knew was that dad brought home the bacon. He was the action person. Vacations, graduations, christenings and baptisms, birthdays, and award ceremonies were all made meaningful by his attendance.

Mom perked up when he came home and a feeling of safety pervaded when he was around. With dad there was always enough money and tools or vehicles or machines to do stuff.

He was a very funny person and even in his temperament. It took a lot to knock him off center. When I was in elementary school he would say, “Sure, you can go swimming…but don’t get wet!” When I was twenty he would reflect, “This too shall pass.”

In his latter days on earth, in his 90s, he recited a lot of poetry. One day I recorded him as he sat smoking his pipe by the front windows of his condo. He liked to sit there and watch the “goings on”. Birds, them dern squirrels, and dwellers at Bay Oaks were all under his daily scrutiny.

Here is a short video of Dad reciting a couple of his favorites for me:

I remember distinct stages in my life when time stood still.

The first stage was early childhood living in no measured world except by sunrise and sunset. Hours may have passed while I was deeply engaged in play and exploration, present to the moment only.

During this quietude of mind I was a keen observer of plants, animals, and people and their curious behavior and their lives. I studied my parents, how they spoke to each other and to me and my siblings. I noticed when they spoke to neighbors or strangers—the subtle changes, deference made.

School days ended the quiet world I lived as a young child. I learned about clocks, schedules, thinking about the past and planning for the future. One classroom club I joined was the Busy Bees. I must have signed up for a lifetime membership because the next thirty years I lived the life of a bee in a hive of fellow bees. The continuous hum and bustle of bee life was joy and motivation. There was much to get done and I wanted to learn everything I could about being a bee.

Then something happened that called me away. Deep was that call that drew me to an open field and big sky above. There were sounds: trickling brooks, the cry of a hawk, rustling in the tall grass. The warm sun caressed my hair and skin welcoming me back. Voices spoke within me. I was reminded who I was born to be. I was not a bee, they said. I was bound to be a butterfly.

That was the second period of quietude.

Life sweeps us along in its currents and soon I was bobbing over stones and around isles, racing in torrents and languishing in still pools but always going somewhere without cessation. Then I met an Indian woman who taught me to stop…wait…consider. She had me sew little bags of rose petals by hand and to chant the Rosary. I lit candles, painted golden boxes, stayed quiet in my dark, cool trailer in the roasting desert near Yuma, Arizona. She read from the Upanishads and Sufi teachers, Iroquois saints, and the Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. Time had no meaning; the sun rose and the sun set but made no egress or exit through the blanket-shrouded windows of her home. I unwound my glistening wings and fluttered a while.

That was the third period of quietude.

Life then became a walk, sure-footed and true. I chose to be here or there. I wrote about my experiences and read about those of my fellow beings, leafy, furry, scaled, feathered, four-legged and two-legged. Quietude came and went in those days but stayed finally when I turned fifty.

This was the fourth period of quietude.

Quietude took residence in me.