ThinkLady

Please, just call me Ed

I'm voting for Ed because when I met him, he firmly shook my hand, took the time to look me in the eye and said, "Please, just call me Ed, just like you would any of your friends." He had me with "please" on that one!

As we talked, he was in no hurry to move to the next person waiting to speak with him. He was cordial, he patiently listened and responded to what I said (rather than using campaign talking points or speaking in vague generalities), and I watched him take that kind of time, pay that kind of personal attention, to each person he spoke with.

I'm voting for Ed Shadid, candidate for Ward 2 councilman in Oklahoma City, because he's pledged to bring openness, accountability and transparency to the MAPS projects and to push for all the projects the people voted for (not just for those the Chamber of Commerce wants). Ed believes in innovation and has great ideas for continuing the momentum in OKC in a way that benefits all of us.

I'm voting for Ed because he's an advocate for healthy, sustainable and resilient communities, for a strong local economy grounded in encouraging and supporting lots of local entrepreneurs and small and mid-sized businesses, and keeping more of our money here, in our community, where it can circulate and provide more and better paying jobs.

I'm voting for Ed because he's pledged to be an advocate for neighborhoods, for health, for senior citizens, for school kids, and because he's accessible. I've seen him out and about in our neighborhoods, making the rounds at all kinds of events, talking one-on-one to everyday people versus hobnobbing at high-dollar fundraisers.

I'm voting for Ed because he is not a professional bank lobbyist like his opponent Charlie Swinton, who I've yet to meet or see anywhere but on a cheesy billboard and in those disgusting mailers that have made me sick to my stomach with their hateful vitriol.

I'm voting for Ed because Swinton's very profession, bank lobbyist, means his loyalty and first responsibility is to the banking industry. This is deeply concerning to me, and in my opinion carries immense potential for numerous conflicts of interest.

I'm voting for Ed because while I appreciate all the good that the Chamber of Commerce, Chesapeake, Devon and Sandridge do for our community and am supportive of them in many ways, I don't feel that gives them the right to run our city and call the shots behind closed doors. I think we need at least one city councilman who will openly question the maneuvering of these power players in a civil, logical and fact-based manner. From what I've seen and heard from Ed, he's has the courage and wisdom to do just that.

I'm voting for Ed because he accepted no money from the Political Action Committees (PACs) that are making a sham of democracy. A half a million dollars spent on city council races is ridiculously wasteful. One in four children in Oklahoma are going to bed hungry every day -- what would have happened if these same cowardly PAC donors hiding behind a nonprofit organization set up to launder dollars for them instead spent that money on reducing childhood hunger? This is an opportunity to resoundingly repudiate the notion that he/she/it who spends the most money buys the office, to take back our democracy at the most local level from the insidious poison of money and the hideously undemocratic influence of special interests.

I'm voting for Ed because our democracy was founded on "we the people." That's not "we the people with a lot of money and power," but "we the people" with no regard for how much money any of us have. "We the people" is working families just barely scraping by. It's the just-out-of-college young adults who can't find decent jobs, and lonely seniors who can no longer drive and have no safe place to walk or a grocery store to walk to. It's moms and dads working multiple minimum-wage jobs just to make ends meet. It's people living in neighborhoods with bars on their windows and doors where it takes 45 minutes or more for the police to respond to an incident.

“We the people” is kids who go to schools without working kitchens, where the lunch menu is high-fat, high-sodium, processed foods; kids who -- unless we change the school food system -- are far more likely to become the first generation to die at a younger age than their parents. It's the poor, the tired, the huddled masses yearning to get a decent, well-rounded education, make a living wage, take care of themselves and their families, be happy. “We the people” is me, you, us.

I'm voting for Ed because for the first time in a very long time someone tore down my wall of cynicism and dared me to believe that not only will my voice be heard, but that it matters.

You matter! Please consider voting for Ed Shadid for Oklahoma City Ward 2 councilman tomorrow, Tuesday, April 5th.

Technorati Tags: Community,change,politics,democracy,freedom,hope

The Tao of Jane

I read a lot of blogs. I love the creative merging of words, photos, videos, nuances of distinctive personalities, ideas swirling around in the digital universe.

Some blogs make me happy just about every time I read them, even when their subjects are serious, provocative, or fun and silly, and those are the ones I gravitate to on a regular basis. One of those blogs is Jane Fonda’s.

Jane, I use her first name because I think from reading her blog she would want that, is an astute blogger, courageous in sharing her wisdom, her failings, the controversy that still occasionally dogs her life, her journey. She writes about her life with a sense of humor, touching on her professional work and work she does for the common good with eloquence and enthusiasm.

I think Jane is probably a seeker. I see her exploring new ideas with palpable passion, lifting up women and those around her up on a regular basis, regardless of whether they are long-time friends or someone she just met on the street, and while she lives a lifestyle that most will only dream of, she comes across as gracious, inclusive and egalitarian, sharing photos of her life as well as fun times with many celebrities in a way that shows us, her readers, just how human she and her colleagues are. She explores spirituality that in a way that’s rare in the blogging world – she’s non-judgmental, respectful, open, listening – bringing her own learning to bear while at the same time sharing the wisdom of others with unfailing fairness. There’s a twinkle in her voice about herself, an humbleness that given her accomplishments, is refreshing.

I once talked with a writer who’d met and hung out with a lot of celebrities. Because the nature of being a celebrity in our society is challenging, he said some become insulated, wrapped in a removed world where they are the center of their universe, and in some ways this can make them less interesting, less engaging, i.e. there’s little reciprocity in carrying on a conversation that’s only about them.

To be fair I don’t think this is a condition germane to celebrities, but one all of us in one way or another face. We exist in two worlds – our interior and exterior worlds. There’s a tendency, exacerbated by the notion that celebrity status is something desirable along with the ease of sharing our thoughts via the online world and social media, to believe every thought we have in our interior dialogue is significant, luminous, worth sharing. It’s easy then for our world to quickly become all about us, how many followers we have on a blog or on Twitter, how many friends we have on Facebook, how long visitors to our website or blog stay and explore. And then, if we’re not careful, we can become a cult of our own personality, gravitating to the reality of our choosing, constructing a world that reinforces our own beliefs.

It may be safer for fragile human egos and certainly understandable to live in our cocoons this way, but I believe there’s a terrible danger in doing so. When we make our world all about us, our minds start to close and we lose creativity, lose insight into what might make our own lives more joyful or meaningful, lose diversity of thought, become less adaptable and flexible. Once we do that, it’s easy to wake up calcified, judging, uncompassionate, in a dark, disconnected place.

Unless you’re an exceptionally enlightened person – I’m not – I think it’s very hard to stay open to the Universe, to find a balance rooted in thoughtful confidence, compassion and love. And that’s why I enjoy reading Jane, because with all that’s happened to her in her life, she’s models a continual striving for awareness and enlightenment, for balance and openness in a modest, joyful way, and that inspires me to do the same. Thank you Jane.

To be free

Grateful.

To

Be

Free

To

Be

-- me

“Freedom is a hard thing to preserve.

In order to have enough you must have too much.”

– Clarence Darrow, quoted in a New York Times article “Killers, Klansman, a King”

 

Freedom is a town in California, Idaho, Wyoming,

Indiana, Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire, New York,

Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. Is it a state of mind too?

 

"Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

– Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus,”

inscription on a bronze plaque at the Statue of Liberty

“It was hard to know whether to feel sad in the face of this sentiment —

pained that a pawn in a larger drama

saw himself as important enough to warrant inclusion —

or perhaps inspired that even at the lowest depths

of the American workforce,

faith in a shared enterprise remains.”

– Peter S. Goodman, “The Great Rupture, New York Times

 

“It takes hard work and some initial investment,

but you are buying your true freedom.

Most of us are still indentured servants because of our lifestyles.

40+ hours a week (“if we are 'lucky")

just to stay on the treadmill

and have some occasional vacations.

Permaculture breaks the work-consume cycle,

and still allows us to live in the suburbs

and even the cities.

 We can be in balance with the Earth,

and still have luxurious lives.

They aren't necessarily mutually exclusive …

 Permaculture is a HUGE part of the answer.”

-- Anthony Anderson, “Vote for Permaculture for Real Freedom,”

The Huffington Post

A deep, inner crisis of the soul

A very erudite quote from Prince Charles below posits the many crises we face are rooted in an inner crisis of the soul. I totally agree. The Transition movement makes this point eloquently by addressing the need for outer and inner Transition, with the inner transition being a different way of moving and being in the world deeply rooted in Permaculture design principles. 

"When we hear talk of an 'environmental crisis' or even of a 'financial crisis,' I would suggest that this is actually describing the outward consequences of a deep, inner crisis of the soul. It is a crisis in our relationship with – and our perception of – Nature, and it is born of Western culture being dominated for at least two hundred years by a mechanistic and reductionist approach to our scientific understanding of the world around us. So I would like you to consider very seriously today whether a big part of the solution to all of our worldwide “crises” does not lie simply in more and better technology, but in the recovery of the soul to the mainstream of our thinking. Our science and technology cannot do this. Only sacred traditions have the capacity to help this happen."

The Prince of Wales made these comments in a recent speech on Islam and the Environment at the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford University. Matt McDermott at Planet Green, wrote an excellent assessment of the Prince's speech on Planet Green today, and notes the prince "brings up some themes which continue to be overlooked by the mainstream of the green movement, tragically." Right on Matt!

McDermott writes:

"What hits exactly the right note for me is the Prince's accurate identification at what really lies behind our twinned and ongoing environmental and economic crisis-as-norm. It is constantly searching for external solutions to problems to the exclusion of considering that, at the least partly, the issue is internal to humanity. Put plainly it is always attempt[ing] and expecting the world to adapt to our desires, rather than adapting ourselves to it."

Just imagine what could happen if we all took this kind of transitioning seriously. What an extraordinary sight to behold.

McDermott's full comments on Prince Charles' speech are here.; full transcript of the Prince of Wale's speech is here.

Remembering

Remembering is a touchstone informing the now and the future -- honoring those we lost in Oklahoma City 15 years ago and their families, children, friends with love.

"All fanaticism is a strategy to prevent doubt from becoming conscious." -- H.A. Williams