Albino Lizard

There is a deeper meaning behind the mundane

recent posts

about

I like to write poetry, music, memoir, and allegorical fiction. I believe this life is for learning. I want to learn and teach all I can. * Email: jeraigo@yahoo.com *Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/jera.igo *BLOG: https://albinolizard.blog/ *Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/jerajones *Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFC4zVFFU4yCoEsR83nq2ZQ

  • My Addiction

    Alcohol and drugs were just subsidiary addictions. My main disease is unhealthy relationships. Alcohol use kind of tapered off with me until sometime during winter or early spring of 1992, I decided I didn’t want to use it anymore. Shortly after that, in April of 1992, I joined a religious organization (the Baha’i Faith) that asks its members not to use substances that lower mental capacity in any way. That makes perfect sense. Why would I ever want to do anything that might damage my God given faculties?

        I used to drink wine and beer. I even brewed my own beer a few times. During the time I was making home brew (the mid nineteen eighties), I thought it was a health drink. What clued me that it might not be so healthy was when my alcoholic husband, at the time, drank forty bottles of home brewed stout in one night. That proved that it wasn’t healthy, for him at least.

        I also used to smoke marijuana. I split up with my second husband in October of 1991. It was about a year prior to that that I finally realized I just didn’t enjoy being high, and that there really was no point in doing it, just because he was doing it, when, honestly, it just wasn’t doing anything for me. I would get high and then, finding myself high, my mind wasn’t working the way I wanted it to, and now I was going to have to wait several hours, maybe even overnight, to get my useful mind back. Why did I have to do it? Just because someone else enjoyed it? That was no reason! So I stopped.

        The continuum of having less unhealthy relationships has been going on for a long time. At some point it changed to having an even healthier relationship, instead of a less unhealthy one. But I can’t say that I don’t still have room for improvement. A few days ago I decided not to go into a screaming rage anymore when someone makes fun of me, or does something that I find irritating. I’m better than that. But to my shame it wasn’t that long ago that I lost my cool over some little thing that wasn’t worth making a fuss over. It hasn’t happened within the last few days though. Thank God!

  • Botched Butchering

    Botched Butchering

        It was great of my parents to take me and my daughter in after my failed marriage, and I really appreciated it. I wanted to be an asset. I wanted to help. I decided to make dinner for them all by myself. There was no meat except the kind walking around on two legs (or four legs. However, I thought that meat on four legs would probab ly be too much for me to butcher all by myself.) I prepared to butcher a chicken. I put a large pot of hot water on the stove and turned on the heat. Water needed to be scalding hot in order to remove the feathers from a freshly butchered bird. I put an empty metal bucket just outside the kitchen door. I rounded up the axe and found a stump I could use for a butchering block. Next, I chose a sacrificial victim. We only had one rooster, so he had to be spared, to keep the eggs fertile. I had been watching which hens left eggs in the nest and grabbed one that I thought didn’t. She huddled in my arms like she was expecting to be mated. Sorry little hen, that’s not what’s in store for you this time.
        I grabbed her by the wings and legs and laid her head on the stump. I held the wings with my left hand and transferred the legs to between my knees. In my right hand I wielded the axe!
        Neck is my favorite part. I wanted it as long as possible, so I brought the axe down swiftly, aiming for the very top of the neck. She moved, and the axe cut off her bill and part of her face.
        She got away for a minute and stumbled around in the grass bleeding profusely. She couldn’t see. I caught her again, both of us determined. Me to finish the job, and she to escape. She was slimy with blood. This time I cut half the neck off along with the rest of the head. The cat ran off with it while I put the butchered chicken in the bucket, poured boiling water over her and removed the feathers, after having allowed the headless bird to flop around in the grass for a while bleeding out, I hoped, in spite of my botched attempt to end her life in one stroke.
        Next, I cut up the bird for the frying pan. I cut off the wings, feet, legs, and thighs. Next I used a short, sharp knife to carefully cut around the rectum. The object is to keep the entrails intact so that no feces spills on the meat. I had never chopped a head off before, but I was well experienced in the more sedentary aspects of butchering, having had a long apprenticeship with my father.
        I rinsed the edible pieces and threw the feet, entrails, and lungs outside for the cat. I left the kidneys in the lower back, another of my favorite pieces. I loved biting into the fat around the tail.
        I started a little oil heating in the frying pan, mixed whole wheat flour and egg in a bowl, dipped the edible pieces in the batter and placed them in the hot olive oil. I added the heart and liver after everything else.
        After browning the chicken in oil, I added water, turned down the flame and placed a lid over the cast iron pan. An older bird would need to stream for awhile. I also made a salad and steamed some frozen peas and carrots.
        My parents came home to a home cooked meal. I didn’t tell them why the neck was so short.
        I remembered the botched butchering a few days ago while mentioning that I had once done a lot of butchering, in an effort to explain why I now no longer eat butchered things. At the time, I decided not to tell this story, since others were eating chicken. (The botched butchering took place about 45 years ago.)

  • Self Governed Community

        The 1 percent are exploiting the 99 percent. Those who are slow to understand are propagandised to believe it is the other poor who are exploiting them. They think the problem is that other oppressed people are not carrying their weight, when actually the problem is that much of the billionaire class is just looting everyone else and doing nothing for humanity. Those slow to understand are using alcohol, caffeine, nicotine etc. to keep themselves in a self-righteous haze, but they are waking up.
        We could come together in caring communities, together meeting all of our needs locally, but we are oppressed with war machinery that serves only the interests of a wealthy few. We are making weapons that are being deployed on the poor in other parts of the earth. War is a technique used by a few powerful business tycoons to impoverish and destabilize a region. Then the exploiters can come in and offer jobs paying a pittance, and appear to be improving the lives of those devastated by the war. The real threat comes from those powerful ones who are caught up in an addiction to an extreme monetary gain, not the fictional enemy created to justify an invasion.
        Our food, fuel, fabric, flowers, building materials and manufactured goods could be grown or produced locally. Instead, food and other goods travel long distances with all stages in the process being exploited by a powerful few.
        We could live in dense walkable communities with dwellings, gardens, orchards, stores, schools, libraries, office space, industry, healthcare, meadow and forest close by. We could be living and working in worker-resident owned cooperatives. Elders could help with child care. Instead we have an apartment with no access to garden, or a tract house with scarcely room for a small garden, surrounded by strangers, everyone with a long commute to work, elders and children being kept apart. We work for employers who exploit us, and we rent or buy our dwellings from developers who exploit us. Exploiters want to make a big killing off real estate deals and they do.
        We could stay healthy eating fresh, local produce, sustainably grown, without the use of toxic substances, electro and herbal medicine and nontoxic dentistry when necessary. Treatment protocols could be based on evidence of efficacy for the patient. Instead we eat nutritionally deficient and toxic food, grown far away, and are given toxic drugs and invasive surgeries, when sick, that benefit no one but the pharmaceutical-medical-insurance industry. For instance, cancer sufferers who have their sufferings augmented with chemotherapy have less than a 20% survival rate after five years (but the medical establishment makes a lot of money off the misery of cancer patients and their families). Vaccinations and dental restorations are laden with heavy metals and other toxins. Pioneers in electro medicine died under mysterious circumstances. Pioneers in Natural Hygiene and Naturopathy were worn down by frequent jailings and other harassment. Treatment protocols are primarily based on what is profitable for medical institutions, not what is effective in aleving suffering.
        It will not require a majority of aware people to turn the tide, I don’t believe, just a significant minority, because the majority of people don’t think for themselves anyway.
        We who are aware can all meditate and breathe into the entities that should serve us, exhaling the oppression and expectantly inhaling the blessings to come. There will be those who will respond with love. Eventually love will win.

  • Defining Criminality

        We’ve got criminals demanding to be treated like decent people. Well there are different rules for criminals. They certainly play by a different rule-book. We too should have different etiquettes for interactions with criminals and interactions with decent people. Do we pray to the devil the same way we pray to God? I don’t think so

        So to start, let’s define criminal behavior. Secondly, we should recognize criminal behavior when we see it, or are informed about it. Then we need to consider the difference between how we respectfully relate to decent people and how we apply the law to criminals.

        Criminals tell lies. These are not miscalculations, figures of speech or lapses in memory. These are bold, calculated misrepresentations of facts.

        Criminals are not humble nor contrite. They blatantly disrespect others. They are openly murderous and oppressive to those they perceive as powerless.

        Criminals are motivated solely by self-interest. Concern for others is never a consideration.

        Can we agree on these descriptors of criminals? Are we under any obligation, then, to allow criminals the same rights as decent people?Once we have heard a person’s lies enough times, and heard about people hurt, stolen from, oppressed, raped and killed by that person, enough times, doesn’t there come a point where we can make the judgment that that person is a criminal? And once enough of us have made that judgment, doesn’t a different behavior, on our part toward him or her, apply? Do we have to extend a podium to that person so he or she can continue to lie to us and propagandize us from the same place of power we give to those who have earned our respect? What kind of sense does that make?

        The things that are wrong in this world can be corrected by curtailing criminal behavior. The three steps of defining criminal behavior, recognising criminals, and then putting criminals in their place, will be done, once enough of us stop making excuses for blatant criminality.

  • Eating Healthy

    I wrote “Eating Healthy On A. Budget” three years ago. Some things have changed. Some things are still the same. We still eat two meals per day, both of which are vegan. The first meal is all raw: fruit, nuts and seeds. The second meal is a gently cooked whole plant starch with raw vegetables or salad.

    We have lost the ability to drive our jeep to our retreat. We now carry food for a couple of miles, uphill and down, in our backpacks. We use a ceramic filter and captured rain water.

    I found I had to rethink my diet choices while on retreats after hurting myself carrying too heavy a load of fresh fruit and vegetables. I started taking dehydrated fruit and vegetables, which I soak prior to eating. I put some oatmeal in the soak along with the died fruit, nuts and seeds. It’s great! It’s almost time for breakfast, and I’ll eat what I put to soak yesterday.

    Since we’re in the middle of a rain storm the solar oven will not work for the millet I plan on making for later, so I’ll cook it on the wood stove. On sunny days I much prefer to go solar.

    Guess I’d better sign off before I run down my phone any more. Not sure how much sun there’ll be today to recharge.

  • You Hog the Conversation Blues

        I turned my pain into art. When the last straw occurred, we were part way up the trail to our retreat. After that I marched on, hitting the trail with my stick in my anger. An hour and a half later, I was at the utility tailer where our instruments are. My guitar has been my therapy for a long time. It was again. When I thought of a funny line for a blues, I laughed. By the time he arrived, I no longer had the urge to give him a piece of my mind.
     

    You talk talk talkin’, talkin’ all the time.

    You talk talk talkin’, talkin’ all the time.

    I can’t fit a word in so I just stop tryin’.
     
    I try to say something, and you shoot my words away.

    I try to say something, and you shoot my words away.

    Alright, go ahead, just talk to yourself all day!
     

    You say, “what do you think baby?” and now your gonna yell.

    You say, “what do you think baby?” and now your gonna yell.

    Is it really my turn, well how am I supposed to tell?
     

    I talk or just keep quiet, either way I lose.

    I talk or just keep quiet, either way I lose.

    I’m tired of your monologue, you hog the conversation blues!
     

        To be fair the last few days have been difficult for us both. Perhaps he took the brunt of it and shielded me from the onslaught from without. I’m crying because he passed some of his pain on to me. The county is being difficult to us about a vacant piece of land we own. They won’t help us move forward; they just fine us for visiting, calling it illegal storage when there’s nothing there! It’s really difficult.

  • Stopping Distance

    Stopping Distance

    My foot slammed into the brake, and the car lurched to a stop. Something on the console fell to the floor. Traffic had suddenly bunched up in front of me around a blind curve. I took my foot off the brake allowing the car to cautiously move forward again. The closest we had come to the car ahead was approximately 2 car lengths.
        I breathed a sigh of relief. We had come through that one okay. I heard no gratitude for an incident well-handled from the passenger.
        “Why do you speed up into brake lights? I don’t understand it. You always drive that way. I drive completely differently. I yelled, ‘Stop!’ three times before you finally took your foot off the gas and put it on the brake. You always ignore me. You know everything. You’re the perfect driver, like you’re perfect about everything. You don’t have anything to learn from me. Look at you. You run over curbs, drive into ditches, scratch up our new car. Oh but you’re just perfect. I don’t drive like you do. I watch where I’m going. When there’s brake lights ahead, I slow down. Your foot’s on the gas now. They’re going to slow down again, and you’re going to hit the brakes again. Gas brake gas brake. I don’t drive that way. I told you to stay in the left lane, but you ignored me like you always do. See? The right lane ends and you have to merge. I’m sure you do this on purpose because you know it upsets me…”
        Eventually I got sick of that and gave him a piece of my mind, at high pitch and top volume of course, or he would just interrupt me. I told him the facts as I saw them, several times. Each time he would repeat his spiel again.
        Now here I am taking inventory. The car is fine, our bodies are fine. All our possessions that we keep in the car are fine.
        Emotionally I’m a train wreck. Why does love have to hurt? There is an argument for being alone. Maybe it’s lonely, but it doesn’t verbally abuse you. Maybe you don’t have anybody to love, but you don’t have anybody to hurt you either. Is companionship worth the pain?
        Well it doesn’t matter. Even though he is right next to me, I can ignore him and be by myself. If he makes himself difficult to ignore, I can get in a different vehicle like I am now. We have two of them here. I need to get some sleep so I’m going to get in the vehicle where the bed is.
        It’s typical that harsh words come my way whenever life gives him something difficult. Stopping suddenly in a traffic situation is one of his triggers. Why do I have to just take the blame? When he and I argue about what a lie is and who is lying, he thinks that if he is the last one to call me a liar that his assertion becomes true when I stop rebutting it. Okay, you’re playing hard ball with the word ‘liar’ that we’re batting back and forth. We’ll see who can go without sex the longest.
        Whoever cheats pays for the divorce!
        Of course it will be him that can go without the longest. I can’t hold out very long. Maybe being micromanaged and controlled would make some sense if you would put your hands on my ass .
        He showed me a quote from Buddha about happiness is looking within and unhappiness is reacting to outside circumstances that won my heart and I was wrapped around him again.

  • The Great Divide

        Suddenly a large water main gushed forth: “Sssssssssss!” Actually there was no water in this dry desert landscape. I looked next to the boulder in front of me and there in the shade, at the base of a rock, was a large snake, coiled and shaking it’s rattle-tail.
        Part of me wanted to make a stand, and that’s the part I should have gone with. But no, after poking the snake with my walking stick, I ran like a scared rabbit, only much more clumsily than the rabbit would have run. I stumbled, did a front flip and landed on my backpack, which cushioned my fall with the large canvas tarp it contained. I didn’t see the snake coming after me, so I lay there a couple minutes. I still had the stick, which I had found along the trail somewhere, in my left hand. It had served me well for several hikes already. I hadn’t bumped my head. The only injuries I noticed were a sore right hip, and a sore joint on the last segment of my right ring finger. I staggered to my feet with the heavy pack. What was I thinking? I asked myself. Why did I get off the trail?
        Three days ago, Jim and I performed for a Farmer’s market. I met the manager for the first time that day. We had arrived early so I was taking my time about setting up. Then I was informed, that instead of the three hours we had prepared, we only had one hour, and instead of starting in an hour and a half, we would be starting in 30 minutes. I felt stunned, and needed some face time with the Creator. There was nowhere to go, so I just turned my face away.
        What would we do? Would we plan a different set list for the hour, or just use the first hour of the three-hour list Jim and I had mapped out together? I pulled out the list and looked at it. There was hardly time to do much remapping. I decided to make one change and coordinated that with Jim.
        Later that evening I got a text that the board had decided to use another act for their fourth Sunday. I was stunned again. But working with someone who thinks nothing of jerking you around (the farmer’s market manager), is probably not something to fight for. If we had been informed in advance that it was to be an hour’s audition, we would have prepared differently. We could have perfected the 15 pieces we ended up playing (and singing). Instead, we had spent a lot of practice time pulling three hours of material together!
        So I was bored yesterday and wanted to explore. Plus I thought if I just went straight downhill, instead of following the meandering trail, I would get to the bottom faster. Well I was wrong. Jim was flaked out on a sand barge when I got there. He gently scolded me for getting off the trail. Then he said, “There really isn’t anything I can say, because if you decide to do it again, you’ll do it again.” He knows me well.
        The long uphill stretch was tortuous with my heavy pack. I took the tarp out and had to go back a ways later and retrieve it, plus Jim helped me carry it much of the way even though that meant he carried two of them. They are cotton canvas, 12’x8′. They each weigh about 15 pounds. I was tired of the way plastic tarps deteriorate on the tent garages and gazebo we have at our retreat, so I ordered cotton. We’ll still need to bring up more canvas.
        It really was a good day. I now understand why I was not a success at the farmers market in Santa Isabel. I’m a little left of center, and the lyrics of some of my original songs reveal that. If we had stuck with country and pop tunes they probably would have loved it. We did too much ethnic and jazz for their taste. I’m revamping our repertoire list so we can pick out whatever genre we want to focus on for future gigs.
        I seemed to have received angelic protection with my little mistakes yesterday. Sure could have been worse. In the morning I finished breakfast, gathered up the scraps, and put them in the middle of my compost pile. Then I had a load of manure to dump, so I lifted off the tree prunings I had placed on the top of the pile, dug a hole through the fruit peels, I had placed there earlier, with a garden trowel, dumped in the manure, raked the rinds back over the manure, and replaced the cover. Then a little later I remembered that there had been two burro bananas left when I was full from breakfast. Where were they? Did I throw them in the compost pile with the garbage? So I checked and there they were, fully intact, not a scratch on them. So I wiped them off with a corn husk and brought them on the hike.
        My somersault on a rocky slope sure could have been a lot worse. I did get bit by a red ant on the back of my right knee, later on. It kind of hurts still the next morning. But no snake bite!
        I remembered the person who had given me the phone number that I had started texting 6 months ago. He had been a friend of my late mother’s. After my mother’s dementia had deepened to the point that she could no longer enjoy going to dances with him, he had found another dance partner. He had wanted me to meet her daughter. It had been his hunch that we would get along well because we both are musicians, and we both live off-grid. My mother would have despised our current president. But I remember this man, in one of our many phone conversations, saying something to the effect that he approves of Trump’s anti-immigrant policy and rhetoric. I couldn’t believe it. How could my mom have dated a xenophobe?
        The two ideals are really getting crystalized. You are either for unity and equality or you are for hierarchy. You either want peace and freedom for all honest people, or you want to be part of a racial elite that subjugates everyone else. You can no longer straddle the widening ditch. Please erase racism. Skin color doesn’t matter. Worship customs don’t matter. There is only one God! Please don’t be afraid of people who are different! Learn to see past their color, language, accent, dress, religious rituals, or gender identity, and recognize their level of honesty! Please don’t be afraid of losing material possessions! You are going to lose them all anyway when you pass from this world. Then, which side of the great divide you are standing on will be the thing that matters.

  • The Weight of His Body

        He came into my life in April of 1992, nearly 100 years after His earthly passing. I was reading a tract on the Baha’i Faith I had picked up at a street fair a day or two earlier. I read about His incarceration in a dark, wet dungeon. I looked straight ahead for a moment, thinking, Is This the Lord I have been searching for?
        For decades, I had sought a visionary experience of Christ, but He always seemed to disappear in the shadows of my mind, and never revealed Himself completely, looking into my eyes in the full splendor of His Resurrected Being. In that moment my life was changed forever as I found myself gazing into the Stately Visage of Baha’u’llah.
        Years have gone by. I have studied the Life and Teachings of Baha’u’llah, ‘Abdu’l-Baha, the Bab, Shoghi Effendi and the Universal House of Justice. There is no end to the insights these Sources provide. I have fellowshipped with Baha’is. The Baha’i Faith teaches the Oneness of God and the Oneness of Religion. I have studied, prayed, worshiped, meditated, and shared with other groups as well.
         Still there are times when I feel lost. When I think of a horrible thing that someone did to me, and I feel under their influence once again, and I begin to feel abused, sometimes it is hard to free myself, even though Baha’u’llah has bestowed such a powerful relationship with Himself upon me. Sometimes He hides and I can’t find Him. Then I know I need to seek Him in His written Words. Or I need to meditate in mindfulness until I find Him, or I find myself.
        This morning He gave me another gift. He showed Himself to me again as He has many times before. I had been thinking about how someone had injured me financially and how painful it is, when he came to me and allowed me to intuit the Weight of His Body. Does an astral body have weight? It certainly does. In the case of Baha’u’llah, the Substance of That Figure is so absolutely Profound, that there is no word in the dictionary to describe It.
        I had my first visionary experience of Baha’u’llah back in April of 1992. A few days later I had my first auditory experience of Him. The first time He spoke to me I was in a car parked by a row of pomegranate trees, sitting in the driver’s seat while the small children I had back then were visiting their grandparents. Suddenly I heard words inside my mind that did not originate with my own thoughts and was startled, at first, but soon I came to love the sound of That Voice.
        The first thing He said was, “I am closer to you than your own teeth!” For a year or two He would constantly interrupt my thoughts to admonish me to stop depreciating myself, which, apparently, I had a long-standing habit of doing. He asked me to learn something about Persian music, and since then I have tried to understand the scales the Persian Baha’is use for chanting prayers. I still don’t understand them. I have found oriental scales that I sometimes use for intoning Baha’i Prayers. When Baha’u”llah talks to me now it is not sudden or strange anymore. Sometimes a look at His Facial Expression in my mind’s eye is all I need to receive meaningful communication from Him.
         Baha’u”llah talks to me now it is not sudden or strange anymore. Sometimes a look at His Facial Expression in my mind’s eye is all I need to receive meaningful communication from Him.
         This intuition of His Body that I am experiencing today is something new, and very precious. It is more related to sight than sound, yet it is beyond mere seeing. I may now understand what Jesus was getting at when He offered His Flesh. It can’t be taken literally, but there is a kind of a feeding and healing that I am able to experience when I perceive the Body of Baha’u’llah, the most recent Coming of Christ.

  • Capitalism and Socialism

        Regarding capitalism and socialism, each system has its advantages and disadvantages, it’s strengths and it’s weaknesses, it’s accomplishments and it’s failures. Some people cling to one economic system or the other with religious-like zeal. However we probably need a balance of both, and how do we achieve the best balance, is probably the real question.
        Capitalists believe that an economy, unfettered by laws and restrictions, will naturally balance supply and demand, while providing incentive for innovation. They claim to be in favor of a small government, or even no government, preferring to rely on an unregulated marketplace to destribute goods and services. The weaknesses of capitalism are that wealth tends to become extremely unequal between the extremely wealthy and the extremely impoverished, and also that booms and recessions alternate with extreme peaks. Critics of capitalism point out that capitalists do want certain regulations, but only regulations that benefit themselves.
        Socialism places more resources in the hands of the government. The military, police, schools, libraries, postal service, transportation, civic centers, courts, jails, bodies of lawmakers, elections, and many other aspects of modern life, are run, entirely, or in part, by governmental bodies or agencies. The dichotomy between private ownership and public ownership has become a constantly changing mosaic, where privatization occurs under some administrations, and socialization occurs under others. For instance lately, a traditionally socialized school system has been contracting with private charter schools to educate some of it’s students. The weaknesses of socialism are bureaucracy, government overreach and the suppression of individual initiative. Authoritarians fear that if people are allowed to do their own thing, they will do something harmful to others or to the environment. Thus we have zoning laws that suppress individual initiative. You need the county board to decide whether you can put in a driveway, and you must pay hefty fees and wait for inspections and decisions before you can start.
        Medicare for All would put the management of healthcare in the hands of the government. Although some people distrust this idea, others realize that a change is necessary, even overdue. Private management of healthcare has placed even small professional health interventions out of the reach of far too large a segment of the American public, while our neighbors to the north in Canada, to the south in Cuba, and in many countries across the Atlantic, are cared for with an efficiency that puts basic care, and many specialized procedures, well within the reach of everyone. Because private health insurance companies have proven to be inefficient profiteers, the U.S. government is being called upon, by a growing majority, to take over the health insurance business.
        Also on the horizon is the Green New Deal, an idea that seeks to stop us from contributing to climate change, while borrowing some public works ideas from the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt. Children are panicked about coming of age on a Venusian landscape here on Earth. They are screaming for us to do something! This is their world! Private industry has increasingly revealed itself as being completely incapable of curbing it’s carbon excesses. We are stuck in a petroleum using world. Overnight we must transform ourselves into a green energy using world. Got to Stop This Train to Venus Now! But how?
        We can restructure our communities to provide lodging, employment, educational and cultural opportunities in the same neighborhood, reducing or eliminating long, carbon emitting commutes. Private developers, by their very nature, are incapable of doing this. They want to ramp up rentals and land values to increase their profits. The growing segment of poor are increasingly being left out.
        In order for a necessary restructuring to occur, each neighborhood community, of 1000 persons or less, will need to become it’s own governmental unit. The ideal of private land ownership can expand to an idea of the land being owned by a small cooperative community. The community will require about half an acre per person. Perhaps the community will have a communal garden and a communal orchard, or perhaps each family will receive a land assignment, and be encouraged to grow their own fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds, flowers, fibers and fuel. Housing will be simple, for instance cottages or condos. Community life will be enriched as members live and work together for the benefit of all. Schools, clinics, meeting halls, libraries, and factories will be run under the auspices of the community and it’s elected council, perhaps in cooperation with neighboring communities. Given the free dissemination of knowledge, the gadgets we have come to love can be manufactured in small lots near the point of consumption. Eco-communities might evolve out of existing communities, or they may evolve from existing corporations that produce green products or services. Interested people can come together to plan their community. They can sell their current properties and purchase enough land to build their eco-community. No matter what your ethnicity, if you go back far enough, your ancestors lived in tribal communities. Perhaps the industrialized world is just a temporary aberration in our natural tribal lifestyle. However in today’s world, pluralism and freedom from xenophobia have become essential. Laws can be changed to facilitate the emergence of the cooperative communities that must develop in order to mitigate a destructive climate change.
        We can grow our own food and other botanical products. Communities can be planned with dwelling, garden, orchard, light industry, library and culture within walking distance, and what is used locally can be produced locally.
        The vegan diet is healthier and better for the planet. It is an important part of the plan to mitigate climate change. Less labor, less land and much less water is required for growing food directly from plants, rather than growing feed for animals, caring for, milking and butchering them. Plant based foods can be as satisfying and nutritious as anything.
        We have the need for defense. We citizens of the world need someone to defend us against the military industrial complex based in the United States. How can we dismantle this horrible monster? It loses trillions of our tax dollars, or spends it on projects so secret that there is no accounting. In concert with the corporate media, it propagandizes us that yet another regime change is necessary: Korea. Cuba, Vietnam, Iran, Guatemala, Chile, Argentina, Iraq, Afganistan, Panama, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Libya, Syria, Yemen, . . . Venezuela. The monstrosity has no good news to report about previous coups, except for stellar plundering by the war profiteers, yet the beast has convinced a substantial minority that we need more of it’s ozone layer destroying, and human being destroying, warfare.
        We don’t. And we need to stand up to the excesses of the banking-corporate-military war machine. This is actually our greatest priority for saving ourselves and our planet. As long as we stand ready to handle attacks and allow every community to compassionately police it’s own citizens, but stop the wars of aggression, we can live well and within our means. We can reframe our lifestyles with green ideals for efficiency, joy and a lasting planet to pass on to the precious next generation!