In Recovery

I want to live so the future casts a shadow on my past rather than living in the shadow of my past.

I know, I know.  I've posted this video before, and recently at that.  I'm sorry, I just can't help it.  It's my theme song right now.  What we are doing this winter/spring (Which is it really? I can't tell.) continues to amaze me.  No money but lots of action.  In searching for understanding of this extreme motivation we've fallen under, I am brought back to a period of our lives which for years I have considered to be the happiest nine months of our lives.

There's Seed Saving and There's Seed Saving

Twenty years ago or so, while living in Freedom, Indiana, My sweet hubby and I were in search of propane to fuel our brand new used propane refrigerator.  We were directed to the house of a man who lived, like us, in the middle of nowhere.  His name was Kenny Freeman.  We found him, and pulled our tank out of whatever vehicle we were driving at the time.  (Was it the Volvo wagon?)  Either before or after filling our tank, we began discussing Gardening.  Joe and I were in the middle of planting our first really huge garden.  Kenny took us on a walk through his garden, all the while sharing tidbits of valuable gardening wisdom of the type that only an old farmer seems to compile.  (Did you know that if you wipe your shovel off with an old oil rag every time you use it and store it inside it will last forever and never rust?)  As we wended our way through his beautiful rows and trellises I came across a lovely yellow cherry tomato plant.  When I asked Kenny about it, he plucked a couple of fruits from the plant and handed them to me, admonishing me NOT to eat them.  Cruelty of cruelties! How COULD he deny me the exquisite pleasure of relishing these warm golden delights??? 

Pride and Indecision

I have been in a bit of a quandary the last several months.  For years I have been a corespondent/mentor for several men in prison.  It all began with two young men I met in Brooklyn.  These two brothers made a deep impression on me and every time I went back to Brooklyn I crossed their paths.  Then one year one of them was not there.  His brother told me that he was incarcerated at Riker's Island.   We wrote him a letter and visited him before we left the state.  This embarked me on a long journey of studying the prison system and writing to inmates.  You see, this one man I was writing to encouraged others to write me as well.  I believe that at one point I was writing letters to at least ten men, counseling them, encouraging them, and often helping them in ways that I now realize I shouldn't have.  (i.e. helping them find addresses of people on the outside)  I owe my college degree to these men, because it was in writing to them and desiring to make a difference in the future of prisoners that I found the inspiration to return to college, to excel, and to graduate with a degree in Sociology.

This is where the indecision part comes in. 

Thinking for Myself

One of the greatest challenges for me in communicating in my post-facebook life is thinking for myself.  When I was part of the largest social network, it was extremely easy to pick and choose from the statements and posts of my far more active friends and simply re-post their thoughts.  Now, for the most part, I am on my own.  I need to find topics that interest me and that I think are worth expounding on, then I need to do the actual expounding myself, rather than re-posting the expoundations of other folks.  The problems with this vary.  First, there is the problem of narrowing down the possible topics to a manageable level.  Then there is working up the courage to make statements about said topics that actually have my name on them.  So here is an attempt.

Last week when I was in Bloomington, I reconnected with an old friend from Trinidad.  We asked him how things are there these days and he revealed that Trinidad is not as nice as when he left.  He said that since 9/11 social conditions there had worsened considerably.  Confused, we asked him what effect 9/11 could possibly have had on this lovely Caribbean island.  It turns out that when the towers came down and the USA went to war with the entire Middle-East, the security forces we had previously had in the Gulf of Mexico were rapidly removed and sent to the desert to "fight for our freedom". When this happened, drug runners went rampant, and have been wreaking havoc in the Islands, just as they have in Mexico ever since.  

This connection makes me furious.  I have been against our involvement in the Middle-East ever since it began over a decade ago now.  This news just escalates those feelings.  If the US government would be honest and state outright that "the long war" is an outright imperialist move because the world's oil reserves are seriously depleted and that the only way they can keep the average American fat and happy in their SUV is to take over oil producing nations I could at least respect their forthrightness.  But to continue to claim that they are protecting our freedom by fighting an endless "war against terrorism" is ridiculous.  Especially when one factors in the loss of freedoms we have experienced since the inception of this war, and when one includes the clear and present danger of totally unregulated drug lord activity on our borders.  

Instead of spending billions upon billions of dollars on this interminable war, spend it on the people of our nation to help extricate them from the terrors of drug addiction, spend it on our flagging education system, spend it providing health care (not enforcing the purchase of health insurance), spend it on helping this nation "power-down" from their oil gluttony.  If the money being spent to destroy nations half a world away were being spent on improving our own nation perhaps American policemen would not need to beat up peaceful American protesters in the street.

See what happens when I think for myself?