No. Today is too beautiful for what I wrote last night about the plotlines of the dystopian novel running off the page and into the headlines.
Instead I'm going to post about how Iraqi farmers, the Oakland government, and the lawyers of America are the sources of hope in our modern moment, on vagabondurges.com today.
I was well into my lineup of questions and answers, ordinal numbers and time sequences in class today, blue marker and red marker, hoping my students were getting something out of my antics when something unexpected happened.
She’s maybe three years old. She has the brightest eyes and incredible laughing smile, and she’d lost one of her shoes somewhere. She plays for most of my English class, blocks and panda bears, while her mother learns at a truly incredible pace, moving rapidly from knowing few words when she got to America two months ago to now, when she helps me teach the other Arabic speakers.
But the little one eventually gets bored and wanders off. She loves opening and closing doors, usually with herself on the other side, and the entire office knows her name and laughter, and soon someone will bring her back, a smile on their face, and deposit her at the table where she’ll look around, find her mom, and exclaim with the purity of a child’s joy “Mama!”
She’d snuck out during my lineup, somewhere around “Who arrived third to class today?” and I was just writing “Who got here next to last?” when she popped out from behind my white board easel with a giggle. Someone had given her a multicolored abacus, and she proudly presented it to me, setting it up with a three year old’s precision then stepping back to make space for my admiration and looking up as if saying “Can you believe this incredible thing!?”
And it was. It was an incredible thing. Because there I was on a Friday afternoon in Oakland, every cell in my body feeling heavy with the ominous portents for my country’s future, but here was this little girl, a Syrian refugee who had been through hell without even the words to name the horrors, and she was giggling up at me and presenting an abacus for my enjoyment.
It was something unexpected, and yet absolutely commonplace. I am privileged to spend some afternoons with these people, these incredible, beautiful human souls, and though the ostensible reason is so I can give them more English words and usage, the reality is that they give me hope, gratitude, and a love for our species that can be hard to grasp in the screen-shaped world.
So yes, I’m terrified for our country, but absolutely, I am confident in the human spirit. I am confident that we will continue to move forward. And I’m confident that we as America will continue to make this the kind of place people like this wonderful little girl and her mother want to come to for safety and a better future.
I was all set to tell you about the gains against female genital mutilation (didn’t see that one coming, did you?) but paused (which sounds so much loftier than ‘procrastinated’) on my way over here to watch the LoveHasNoLabels.com video that’s making the rounds right now. I knew what it was from the thumbnail, but the urge to...’pause’...is hard to resist. I’m glad I watched it.
See, a couple weeks ago, I read a friend’s words that she is apparently...um...no longer gay? That she no longer dates women, but gets from god “whatever I was trying to get via sex with women.”
I devoutly respect everyone’s authority over their own sexuality and choices, but the prospect, the fear, all in my perspective, of someone who is naturally (by a divine being or not) homosexual, choosing to just….not do that...anymore? It breaks my heart.
For a long time I hid from the parts of myself that I didn’t like, and the things that scared me at a deep level. Even that much internal discord was tearing me apart. I can’t describe the waves of relief that come in the moments when I can love all of myself. I can’t imagine what it would be like for a person to...move away...from the way they are fundamentally designed to find love.
My immediate response was to tell her that if her god says she’s wrong to love women, wrong for feeling love for whomever she feels it, then she needs to get a new god. But it’s not my place to tell someone else what to worship. It’s not my place to say she’s wrong, or that she should do anything differently. But the fear that she’s been pressured to move away from her access to love because the sex is “infertile”? I alternate between rage and sorrow.
It’s weighed on me for the last two weeks. But in the 3:20 of that video, I felt that weight easing. I am still concerned for my friend, a woman of great intellectual, spiritual, and emotional intelligence, but seeing these other people loving who they love without guilt or fear or shame…
I FeelGood. I hope you do too.
To all the people who accept who they are, I thank you, love you, and salute you.
In my third Feelgood Friday post I said I wanted “to go right up into the horrors of the world today and find beauty in them” but last week I really enjoyed the bunnies. Is there another recent news story that involves serious issues for the human race and cuddly animals?
Why yes, yes there is.
Deforestation! Now there’s a dire issue. Expanses of essential forest are disappearing, worsening climate change, robbing all of us of the advantageous (medical) secrets undiscovered in the verdant depths, depriving us of our natural heritage, and threatening extinction of an unknowable number of species with just as much right to exist on the planet as we do.
You didn't know they get along?
Including...baby chimpanzees! Cute, cuddly, big-eyed and fuzzy-headed baby chimpanzees. And tigers, for crying out loud! As if we have enough of those to spare.
Videos like this one are pretty damn shocking. And it’s all for 1%er corporate profit from producing disposable packaging. Paper and pulp. Since we need more junk mail, redundant print-outs, and packaging.
But what can we really do against corporate titans? Sign a petition? Scoff! Go for it Greenpeace, but we all know banks are impervious to morality. (Unless they happen to be in Iceland, the one country with the ethical cajones to actually hold its bankers accountable.)
And yet, after less than three weeks, Santander bank decided not to continue funding the deforestation. It turns out that even a massive bank pays attention nowadays when 167,513 people sign a petition, 14,788 send emails to the CEO, hundred pick up the phone, people visit branches to speak their consciences, and the video gets shared 100,000 times. Or perhaps they’re just an abnormally human company. That’s theoretically possible.
One bank pulling their funding may not be enough to persuade a company like April to find a better way, but it sends a powerful message that perhaps rapacious business-as-usual isn’t going to be so as-usual for long.
I get pretty down on corporations. When they are legally bound by the rules of corporate charters to do whatever it takes to maximize shareholder earnings, with no regard for ethics or morals (unless you can convince them it’s relevant to their profit margin), and when they own the political process, it’s a big scary world. And it’s no surprise that “The corporation” is an easy and believable default villain in the movies, now that we can’t just blame Russia (for the moment). Or did you think it was only Avatar?
This makes it extra precious, and extra important to note, when a corporation does something right, even if it might cost them moolah. And the world’s rabbits agree with me.
What, you think I'm above putting cute bunny pictures on my blog?
I have no experience with angora sweaters. To be honest, if you’d asked me yesterday what they were made of, I probably would have guessed...uh...alpaca fur? Penguins? Angolans? But it’s bunnies! And it’s unbelievably awful! You can research the process if you don’t believe me (but I recommend you take my word for it, those images are truly nightmarish).
(Which reminds me, somewhere I heard the suggestion to make your first email of the day a positive one. I’m going to give it a try. You? I’ll be curious to hear how it goes.)
Unemployment in Spain right now is 37%, and over 55% among the 16-24. Banks are foreclosing on people right and left, and when this happens in Spain, you still have to pay the bloody mortgage. Suicides by overwhelmed ex-homeowners are becoming common, and in some cases while the bailiffs are coming up the stairs, the homeowners jump off the balcony. The international banking mafia has pushed the Spanish government to pass laws making it even easier to fire employees and pay them less severance when you do it, so unemployment is only increasing, while the masses see the political and economic elites as hopelessly and unapologetically corrupt, in the country with the worst income inequality in Europe (though still not as bad as the US, apparently).
Feeling good yet? Wait for it.
All these problems are at their worst in the south (a global trend that may seem familiar), which in Spain’s case means Andalucia. I remember beautiful Andaluz mountain towns where not much was going on, and I fear for the people now. But not all of them. Not the ones in Marinaleda.
In the late 1970s, when Spain was roiling after the death of Franco, trying to catch up to a world from which they’d been isolated for 35 years, Marinaleda elected a mayor named Juan Manuel Sanchez Gordillo. A very different 35 years later and he’s still in office, elected with overwhelming majorities in every election. Why? What has he been doing?
I saw this on a wall in Bogota, Colombia in 2012, before I'd ever heard of Marinaleda.
They started with a “hunger strike to end hunger” and multiple occupations of large estates under the slogan “Land for those who work it”, alternating with legal appeals within the system. After twelve years of this, they gained control over a stretch of farmland, and now roughly 2,650 of the 2,748 people in the town are part of a farm co-op on it. They work up to six and a half hours a day and are paid twice Spain’s minimum wage, while all profits from the farm are reinvested to create more jobs. Use the profit/product of the land to help people, instead of enriching the 1%? What an astonishing idea.
From this excellent article in The Guardian: “‘We believe the land should belong to the community that works it, and not in the dead hands of the nobility.’ That's why the big landowners planted wheat, (Sanchez Gordillo) explained – wheat could be harvested with a machine, overseen by a few labourers; in Marinaleda, crops like artichokes and tomatoes were chosen precisely because they needed lots of labour.”
The crops they chose required “the creation of a processing factory that provided a secondary industry back in the village, and thus more employment. ‘Our aim was not to create profit, but jobs,’ Sánchez Gordillo explained to me. This philosophy runs directly counter to the late-capitalist emphasis on ‘efficiency’ – a word that has been elevated to almost holy status in the neoliberal lexicon, but in reality has become a shameful euphemism for the sacrifice of human dignity at the altar of share prices."
I don’t know about you, but I get a big ol’ ethical boner when I read those paragraphs. Feeling good yet? Want more?
Remember those evictions? Marinaleda bought and expropriated thousands of square meters of land, and now returns it to the people, along with building materials, labor, and architectural plans through public grants. Homeowners pay 15 euro/month for the rest of their lives, and cannot sell their homes (to prevent speculation).
People in Marinaleda like their mayor
More feelgoodery? Last August, Sanchez Gordillo led supporters into a grocery store, loaded up basic foodstuffs, and took them, without paying, across town to donate to a food bank. “There are families who can’t afford to eat. In the 21st century this is an absolute disgrace. Food is a right, not something with which you speculate.” Of course, if everyone did this, we might have a problem with the people we depend on to transport our food, but the statement, and its willingness to act on behalf of what’s right, are powerful things, a powerful call for higher standards than profit for the few.
The town has no police (and no crime), everyone shares in cleaning and maintaining the community, and they spend the money they save on free internet for all and heavily subsidized childcare. While the neoliberal world decays in entrenched systems of exploitation and corruption, disenfranchised and segregated, apathetic or angry, in Marinaleda co-op members are part of the town’s workings, have a voice, and participate in their community. Private enterprise is absolutely allowed, but exploitative mega-chains are not welcome. Sorry, Walmart, but vete al carajo.
I remember back to the Occupy movement, the indignados in Europe, and all the world’s people who recognize that a system that sucks the blood from the masses to fatten the 1% is not the best we can do, and I can hear the opposition and critics who said “Okay, unfettered rapacious capitalist greed doesn’t work for you, but what do you suggest?” Occupy didn’t seem able to produce a clear alternative, but 108 kilometers from Sevilla, I know where you can find one.
Let me be clear: I love the 92 year old man. Born in 1921, Ronald Read walked to school every day, served in WWII, then worked as a janitor for 42 years, first at a gas station then the local JC Penney in Brattleboro, Vermont. Married only ten years before his wife died, he was known as a frugal man, always wore a flannel shirt and baseball cap, ate off paper plates at the American Legion Christmas breakfast, and died last June. I already love him. Oh, but also, he was really good at picking stocks, and when he died he left $4.8 million to the local hospital, and $1.2 to his local library. And now you love him too.
So I love Ronald Read and would happily talk about how he demonstrates the answer to humanity’s capacity for altruism without personal reward, but for these FeelGood Friday posts, I want to go right up into the horrors of the world today and find beautiful things in them.
Bagan was beautiful, even when I hadn't slept
This week I had the privilege (and I use that word deliberately) to work a little bit with some refugees from Myanmar. Rampant in my privilege (there’s that word again), I hear “Myanmar” and remember Shwedagon Pagoda’s golden buddhas, Bagan’s misty morning zedis, and the rich sauces of streetfood vendors in Yangon. Their memories of Myanmar are very different.
What happened to them, there? Language barriers meant I couldn’t ask them, and I would be hesitant to pry anyway, but it had me thinking about that beautiful, but strife-ridden country. Myanmar’s improving, and I hope the corresponding tourist boom is pressure to continue forward progress, but I don’t measure real change by the statements of the government or GDP growth, I measure it in the lives and experiences of the people. So what’s happening to the most vulnerable people in Myanmar?
"Before this, we never talked to the other girls in the camp because they came from different villages and we were too shy, but now, wherever we go, we have friends who know us so we don't feel so scared."
“In traditional Burmese culture - where men are considered superior to women and young people are bound to defer to their elders - adolescent girls are widely expected to keep their thoughts, feelings and opinions to themselves. As a result, abuses go unreported and many girls remain ignorant of their human rights or potential.” Doesn’t sound very FeelGood at first, but you need to read the rest of the article. Because the program run by Girl Determined, where these vulnerable adolescents are learning "issues such as decision-making, self-confidence, girls' rights and planning for their future" will make you smile, and make you FeelGood on this beautiful Friday.
After my post about Tuol Sleng, a friend asked “Did you find yourself looking at Cambodians of a certain age differently after visiting those sites? I found myself wondering what side people were on. And wondered how on earth you manage to put a population back together again after something like that.”
A Cambodian elder we met near Chi Phat, I would have loved to hear his story
The answer is yes. Or rather, yesses. I did find myself wondering about people’s past in the Khmer Rouge years, and was stunned by both the challenge, and apparent success that the country has had, in healing from such astonishing trauma. But one does not just ask “So, were you one of the victims, or one of the murderers?” Besides, as with nearly all of human existence, that dichotomy is false. Things are much more complicated than that.
Take Aki Ra. On paper, you could read that he was part of the Khmer Rouge, and planted an unknown number of landmines, the same mines that are still killing and maiming Cambodians today. Bad guy?
But Aki Ra was a child soldier, a 10 year old forced by the Khmer Rouge to do these things. Some might say that deeds are deeds, and karma is karma, but I challenge anyone to blame a 10 year old, whose family was just murdered, to stand up against armed thugs with the blood of millions on their hands.
But perhaps the more interesting part of the question, the “How do you put a country back together?”, focuses on what people did after the war. What did Aki Ra do?
I can't imagine looking for landmines in a jungle like this one, which we found near Chi Phat
Landmines. Only now, removing them instead of planting them. I would think mine removal would be more difficult than installation, so how much can one man do?
How about 50,000 mines?
There’s a problem with modern reality, in that any number over a couple hundred is basically unimaginable, in a real sense. 50,000 land mines. I try to picture them, spread out on a football field, and the stadium of people whose lives and limbs he has saved, but I’m not sure my imagination can really suffice for understanding what this man has done, to help his country, to help his people, to heal this planet.
He is clearly a hero, and fortunately, CNN agrees.
And just in case his bravery and dedication are not enough? Aki Ra has founded an orphanage to care for children who have lost their parents to these mines. He is one man, making an incredible difference.
(This is the first of my Feelgood Fridays posts. Looking for positive things to talk about is a pleasure, but if you have any suggestions, I would love to hear them. Share the joy, no?
And thank you to Lydia for bringing Aki Ra to my attention.)
Tuol Sleng left a stain and a weight on my spirit, but just as Cambodia was home to this darkness, it also held the cure. The natural beauty of the land cleansed my heart with sunlit swims in Chi Phat waterfalls and a languorous afternoon in a seaside hammock, but the burden of spirit, of disappointment and doubt regarding the nature of the human soul, needed a different remedy.
It’s so easy to only see the negative. If I drive an hour across town, I’ll most easily remember the guy who cuts me off, the space cadet who can’t drive in a straight line, and the squad of sluggards too lazy to flick on a turn signal. I’ll remember those few negatives, without noticing the five hundred drivers who did everything right.
(Thank god I don’t own a car.)
This ease of negativity is most subtle and seductive when we’re sedated by the familiar, accustomed to all our privileges and gifts, alert for anything less than optimal. (Thank god I own a passport.) When traveling, we can more easily reverse this orientation and focus on the positive, celebrate the joyous, and dismiss the uncomfortable as inevitable, but incidental.
I don't have my normal computer, is it me, or is this image of the statue in Kep all wonky?
Despite the afternoon’s shackled memories, when we spent the evening drifting through the light-hearted embrace of New Year’s revelry in Phnom Penh, it took a piece of that burden off my shoulders. Here were humans, having fun together, harming no one. And the following days in Chi Phat, whenever we sat down to a meal with our hosts or chatted with our guide, that human goodness was clear and warm, restorative.
Our last stop, modern Siem Reap and ancient Angkor Wat, combined both the cleansing of beauty and the rejuvenation of kindness. We stood under arching banyan trees that dripped down temple facades which have witnessed centuries, then got back in Mr. Chet’s tuktuk. With an easy smile, kind eyes, and something familiar about him, we liked Mr. Chet from the get-go.
“I’ve got it!” Lydia finally announced. “He’s Cambodian Manny!” Manny is a friend in Oakland, but Mr. Chet was already linked to here by an inspirational friend who founded Altruvistas, the incredible agency that helped me go Cuba and Venezuela. She connected me with Mr. Chet, and I was able to serve the same role, recommending him to a friend who does amazing work with children in Vietnam.
The negative tendency of perception might say “Both those friends are doing far more to help the world than I am” and feel quite boohoo about it. Or, I can foster the positive side that marvels “How amazing is it to exist in a world where so many people are doing so much good?”
On one side we have the darkness of war, torture, death and suffering, at Tuol Sleng and in the news. On the other is the healing light of human kindness, compassion, concern and empathy that we see in the faces of good people all around the world. The latter doesn’t get as much press as the former, but maybe we can deliberately focus on the positive stories, and the people doing wonderful things in the world.
To that end, I will try to blog about positive things every Friday. Feelgood Fridays? I’ll keep my eyes open, and if you hear of stories you’d like to share, I’m open to either guest blogs or recommendations. Just a small balance to the headlines of horror, but maybe it will help orient towards goodness.
And hell, maybe I’ll even start noticing good drivers.
I was well into my lineup of questions and answers, ordinal numbers and time sequences in class today, blue marker and red marker, hoping my students were getting something out of my antics when something unexpected happened.
It’s weighed on me for the last two weeks. But in the 3:20 of that video, I felt that weight easing. I am still concerned for my friend, a woman of great intellectual, spiritual, and emotional intelligence, but seeing these other people loving who they love without guilt or fear or shame…
The town has no police (and no crime), everyone shares in cleaning and maintaining the community, and they spend the money they save on free internet for all and heavily subsidized childcare. While the neoliberal world decays in entrenched systems of exploitation and corruption, disenfranchised and segregated, apathetic or angry, in Marinaleda co-op members are part of the town’s workings, have a voice, and participate in their community. Private enterprise is absolutely allowed, but exploitative mega-chains are not welcome. Sorry, Walmart, but vete al carajo.
Tuol Sleng left a stain and a weight on my spirit, but just as Cambodia was home to this darkness, it also held the cure. The natural beauty of the land cleansed my heart with sunlit swims in Chi Phat waterfalls and a languorous afternoon in a seaside hammock, but the burden of spirit, of disappointment and doubt regarding the nature of the human soul, needed a different remedy.
