By Judith Gayle | Political Waves
It’s easy enough to fall prey to the thought that the world is devolving, that our species is on the brink of existential crisis, given the headlines around the world and the inability of the principals of American governance to break through the corporate coup that has nibbled away at our democratic model for decades, rendering our system in shambles. It’s a hard truth, but evident on all levels, that politics in America is broken — tainted by money and corruption — seemingly beyond repair. Certainly politics is due an overhaul if democracy is to survive, either by revolution or evolution, perhaps both.
A tense public looks on, waiting to see what will happen next. While many object to the remarkable dearth of progress in Washington, most of us are no longer shocked that the majority of our store-bought politicians devalue human life in pursuit of profit and power, much like their corporate masters. If we question why the public doesn’t react with outrage, we don’t have to look farther than the decades of programming to want more, more, more of everything without looking at accountability to the planet or to each other. We cannot demand from our leaders what we don’t expect from ourselves.
A surprising number of us have continuing sympathy for the “greed is good” meme, hoping that the next Lotto ticket brings us a chance to experience a bit of that good life we hear so much about. In fact, polls show that most of the lowest wage earners consider Lotto purchase equivalent to retirement planning. That, and stalled earnings since the mid-70s, may contribute to the fact that fully half of our retiring seniors have nothing to depend on in old age but a meager Social Security allotment. This kind of wishful and disastrous thinking could be managed by better education, but we don’t fund that; some states, most of them Red, seem to like it that way.
Public opinion has soured toward the right’s strident, stringent vision of the future. Today, less than 25% of Americans are willing to call themselves Republican, and they are, by and large, to be found in the board rooms, the country clubs and the rural areas of the nation where they enjoy a modicum of respectability as business persons. Not so the Baggers, who represent an ideological (and illogical) purity imposed by a small cadre of zealots who have literally brought the nation’s House down. The few remaining mainstream Pubs are well tolerated, but due to the dire results of their absolute inflexibility, the majority of the nation has buyer’s remorse when it comes to the Tea Party. Lord knows, I do.
For instance, the same idiots who insisted on sequester began to freak out this week, as furloughs hit airports hard with long delays and canceled flights. Accusing the administration of gross mismanagement (nothing EVER happens in this country that isn’t Obama’s fault), the House quickly created a bill to fund airports, allowing them to keep air traffic controllers in place and placating frequent fliers (themselves and their friends). No such help for Meals on Wheels, of course. None for Head Start, cancer treatment, or poverty programs. The faction who call themselves ‘patriots’ have agreed among themselves that loafers who only take from the system need to be moved to the edge of the herd, while the administration began its negotiations too close to the bone to be any help in the crunch. That leaves 99% of us outside, as usual, looking in. Sequester is nothing less than Kabuki. It should be canceled as cruel and unusual.
And let’s not forget that the Baggers and their supporters are not just hardhearted and hard-headed, they’re delusional. Here in Missouri — where if you haven’t bagged your first turkey by the time you’re four, you’re a Loser with a Capital L — a flap over making concealed carry permits available to the police has resulted in the state senate eliminating funding for the Department of Revenue. This means that at the moment, nobody can get or renew their drivers license. The apparent terror over making copies of carry permits available to authority has to do with a conspiracy theory about United Nations mind control called Agenda 21, which will “transform America from the land of the free, to the land of the collective” through “a mind-control” tactic called the Delphi technique.
If all politics is local — and you start here in the Pea Patch — then I guess we can count our lucky stars that similar delusion hasn’t yet transformed Washington D.C., where NOTHING is going on, to speak of. Maybe it’s a blessing that we’re in stalemate. I mean, we haven’t bombed the U.N. yet. Congress hasn’t passed a bill requiring each household to have an AK-47. You laugh; don’t. Michele Bachmann was reelected last fall. Crazy is still well and has an office in Washington.
Consider: Minority Senate Speaker (recently polled as least popular politician in America and turtle look-alike … OK, I added that last bit) Mitch McConnell just issued his 401st filibuster. This is astounding, to say the least. In the last century, incidents of filibuster were rare, counted on one hand. As late as the Carter administration, the count was a mere 20 per political session. Back then, of course, the Congress was usually busy doing the people’s business. After the New Deal, ideological wars were properly staked in their coffin until Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority came into fashion and the intrusion of church put state out of balance.
The Bush years ripped the last nail from the lid. Under Tom DeLay’s leadership the Democrats were so ill-represented and ignored that they reluctantly turned to cloture as the only way to enter the conversation. Never ones to forgive a slight, with the advent of the Republican House in the 2010 mid-term, the Pubs began a filibuster assault that has brought governance to a stand-still. If you examined the congressional record for legislation passed since the beginning of the year, you would find a very slim volume, most of it irrelevant. Think of it: five months with little or nothing done but the sequester. Now add the two frustrating years that came before. In Washington D.C., there ain’t nothin’ up but the rent.
Yes, when we look around us, we see chaos, we see suffering, we see the unexpected, but we don’t see much help for our social and political ills. That seems especially true in the last difficult weeks, defined by potent astrology and the first of three eclipses demanding our attention, our clarity and sound decision-making. That a good portion of the population makes life-changing decisions in haphazard, knee-jerk fashion simply adds to our angst, but we can take some comfort in recent polls that tell us a vast majority of Americans are coming down on the side of civil liberties, corporate accountability and common sense. Now, if we can push back the hyperbolic nationalism inspired by security issues, used by Pubs like a cudgel, we may still find that the majority of citizens are at odds with a handful of powerful politicians, only some of whom are playing with a full deck.
Echoing that same belligerence world-wide, examples of radical and irrational government pop up and down on the radar like an unending game of Whack-A-Mole. For instance, in Syria, Assad’s probable use of Sarin nerve gas on his own people is goading the United States into some kind of response, but Obama refuses to move, calling on the (gasp!) U.N. to investigate and confirm reports. For the military minded who think this stance is too little, too late, there are understated reminders of the missing WMD that Dubby leveraged into an illegal and immoral war on display this week on the campus of Southern Methodist University. We would do well to remember how easily we lost our national treasure and international respect only a handful of years ago, fallout from which we have yet to resolve.
There are other concerns, as well. The war hawks have been particularly pissy about the administration’s reluctance to enter the fray, but there is apparently no acceptable rebel ideology the U.S. can get behind. Israel is already in a fit of paranoia over which armaments will fall to which factions, all of them pointed toward Jerusalem. Meanwhile, genocide goes on, whether by mortar shell or chemicals, as do the lower-level civil wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan, where ideology is split as decisively as it is here in the United States. We’re all alike at the bottom, as me Mum liked to say with a wink, and that’s our existential conundrum.
As we question our purpose on this planet, and our inability to come to collaboration on circumstances that now resemble an emergency of the species, we need to return to the notion of the collective, of the Hundredth Monkey concept that moves the whole of us forward, unhindered by division. Presently, we appear to be stuck in a decades-long process of moving our existential boulder, hoping to shift it just a bit instead of rolling it away entirely. Surely this current level of obstruction can’t remain static much longer. Pluto and Uranus will guarantee rock moving of some sort, proving that perhaps we’re not quite as stuck as we think.
I connected with a friend this week who despaired that we’d gone through the 2012 shift but hadn’t reaped any benefits. Where are they, she asked? Why aren’t we seeing them? I told her I thought we had to develop “ears to hear” and “eyes to see,” because this new place/space we inhabit asks us for a different set of intellectual and sensory skills than that last place in which we dwelt. For starters, we have to mind where we put our attention. What is raw, tragic and outrageous gets our attention; what is healing, encouraging and progressive rarely does. Consider this glimpse of the larger picture from the Dalai Lama:
We humans have existed in our present form for about a hundred thousand years. I believe that if during this time the human mind had been primarily controlled by anger and hatred, our overall population would have decreased. But today, despite all our wars, we find that the human population is greater than ever. This clearly indicates to me that love and compassion predominate in the world. And this is why unpleasant events are “news”; compassionate activities are so much a part of daily life that they are taken for granted and, therefore, largely ignored.
It’s glaringly true that ‘dog bites man’ doesn’t make the front page, but ‘man bites dog’ does. When I began with Planet Waves ten years ago, I was determined to post as many bits of good news as bad. I failed miserably during the Bush years, when the sharp downward spiral kept us all clutching at our hearts. It’s easier to find items that seem hopeful now, probably BECAUSE so much was lost that we’ve determined to restore. Now, the writing is on the wall for so many of the policies that progressives abhor: DOMA, the drug war, the Tea Party, religious extremism, immigration, military expansion, poverty wages, the prison-industrial complex. We can’t throw a rock without hitting some progressive cause that used to exist on the fringes, now incorporated into mainstream conversation and acceptable thought.
Here’s other handwriting on the wall, waiting to break through the echo chamber: austerity has been found wanting, both by the tragic experience of the Europeans who came before us, and because faulty spreadsheet calculations by a pair of famous economist have recently come to light proving the Pub’s hysterical harangue against the dangers of debt to be mere political gamesmanship.
Paying down the debt is obviously important, but not when the public doesn’t have jobs, hence earnings to buy what the market offers. That brings everything to a halt, and surely we’ve all seen enough of that. Economists like Stieglitz, Krugman and Reich have railed against forced austerity and limited spending, and now they’re proven right. That news is big enough to echo through the capitol. Will D.C. hear it, I wonder? Can we shout loud enough to make them listen?
Here are more productive scribbles that need to be passed around: the Environmental Protection Agency has rejected the State Department’s Keystone Pipeline draft environmental impact statement. They ask if State even considered alternative routes, and accused it of using an outdated “energy-economic modeling effort” in its analysis. It also suggested that State rethink their conclusions that Keystone would not encourage further production of Canada’s carbon-intensive oil sands or significantly increase greenhouse gas emissions.
Delivered on the last day comment was accepted, the EPA critique includes an investigation of prior spills and discusses the many differences between sweet crude and tar sands, along with the industry’s inability to restore spill sites to their previous sound ecology. This is welcome news for the millions of environmentalists calling for the demise of the pipeline. A final proposal will be issued by the the State Department in September, and Obama will make decisions on the pipeline sometime after that.
Meanwhile, calls for civil disobedience in that regard continue, as will events where we are likely to see it. Obama himself has said we can no longer avoid climate issues, even as he is pressured on all sides to sign onto XL. We need to continue to write our refusal of tar sands in large — and BOLD — capital letters!
Remember, it was only a few weeks ago that we were staring down the glassy-eyed specter of a Romney presidency with everything turning back on itself in a capitalist feeding frenzy. Then came November 7th when we hoped for the best; then December 21st when we believed in our brightest dreams. So much has happened in the court of public opinion since then, it makes the head swim. Where are the changes? There, they’re right there in the public polls, the explosion of political petitions and the opening heart of a world both aware of its wounding and determined to heal it. It’s there in the words we use, the conversations we have, our growing awareness.
The channelers tell us that all is in place for our delivery from old paradigm attitudes, that the dark forces are no longer powerful enough to hinder our dreams, but that we — collectively — are enormously powerful in making them come true. That’s what needs our focus. That’s what asks us to step up, be counted, decide our future with discernment and create it with compassion.
We must believe in our collective wisdom, learn to recognize our power to change the world for the better, extend our intent to love our brother and sister as our self. That’s what’s missing from the front pages: the news that we have joined together, arm in arm, to bring one another into a newly created 21st century. Those are the pages we aim to fill, writing the inevitable, together, on the wall.
Heart-warming, Mia, that’s exactly what’s needed, just the FEEL of such a projection is dharmic. One of my FAVORITE things, when I lived in the Northwest, was an annual Day of Blessing at the large Unity church we attended. Over the course of several weeks, people would bring their garage sale stuff, clothes outgrown and things no longer needed up to the church and drop them off. Then, on the designated weekend, with everything laid out on tables, people would come by and take things they wanted or needed.
My kids particularly loved this event, trading out things they no longer wanted in order to gather up games they’d never played or sports equipment they’d longed for. At the end of the day, whatever treasures hadn’t gone home with browsers were picked up by the Salvation Army. Everyone who participated smiled all day long and you could FEEL the good-will in the air. Just thinking about it, I smile. I certainly support such a project; please let us know how it develops.
I turned off that same show about the leather, Lizzy. I can’t watch that stuff either. The LEAST we can do is NOTICE this dreadful happening, that … as you say … provides us our trendy accessories and whatnot. There is so much mindlessness in that level of consumption! Some of the Bangladeshi’s that died were making about 17 cents an hour, and were told that they’d lose an entire months pay if they didn’t show up for work, cracks in the walls be damned.
Thanks for your comments, yeti. I know you feel passionately, I honor your concerns, and share many of them. Blessed be, all of you and thanks for playing!
Good idea, Mia, and very well elucidated. Thank you for sharing the inspiration.
Here is an idea I have been working on that is in existence in different forms but it would be great if there could be a central clearing house. Since Vermont is a state of approximately 600,000 people it is a wonderful place to use as a test subject:
The creation of a new website called ‘VERMONTERS: CARING AND SHARING is in the works to provide a network for Vermonters to assist each other in a number of ways. Similar in scope to Craig’s List, this website would be a statewide collaboration between existing not-for-profit organizations, businesses and private individuals. As fuel and gas prices continue to rise and our economy remains in question we as individuals can assist each other in ways that are characteristic of small Vermont communities.
We all have possessions, some new some old, which we no longer have need of. Many of us are downsizing now that our children are grown and off on their own. Vermonters: Caring and Sharing would allow a place/space for people to network for things they need, based on bartering community. A state-wide press release will be sent to local papers within each area announcing the website and contact information. Individuals with web experience can sign up to volunteer a few hours each month to input contributions and new listings. One master Internet expert will be hired for troubleshooting and site maintenance.
Categories will include:
Furniture,
Computer equipment,
Household appliances,
Clothing, etc…
Services such as transportation,
Carpentry work,
Lawn work,
Cleaning services,
Running errands,
Cooking, etc…
Health care
Things people need such as wood,
Animal food,
Fencing,
Hay,
Books, etc…
There will be a section for bartering, but one with very flexible terms and will be based on a “pool” from which to barter. For instance, my dining room table could be listed and Jim needs my table and I need Jane’s sewing machine. Jane will then be able to choose what she needs when she needs it. The program will be based on mutual respect and a sense of community spirit.
There will be a section where people can donate their time and vehicles to provide moving services to deliver items to people without transportation or without adequate transportation for larger/specific items.
The possibilities are limited only by our own wants and needs.
In addition, there will be a section of vignettes, describing individual situations where Vermonters are in need. For example, if a young Vermont couple, after being evicted from their home, is living in their car with their children, they would be able to register and tell their story on the web. This would be accomplished through one of the local community organizations such as Community Action or the Lamoille Family Center. People would have the opportunity to send contributions specifically to help this family in need.
We all want to share what we have and help those in need. Vermonters: Caring and Sharing will provide the venue for that to happen. Hopefully, it will prove to be an example for other states to initiate similar programs. In working with existing programs such as Free Cycle, Craig’s List, Time Bank, etc… links on Vermonters: Caring and Sharing would provide direct access to these sites, as well as update their availability by category. All listings would be cross-referenced to create a comprehensive listing of what goods and services are available within the state of Vermont.
Even though Vermont is small in terms of its population size, it has consistently been at the forefront of progressive thought and action. Vermont is one of the most beautiful spots on the planet and that beauty nourishes its residents in a way few people experience on a daily basis. Vermonters represent the values we cherish as Americans: integrity, a strong work ethic, and a sense of community.
Here’s the link to this BBC documentary series,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00s7xwb
You express it all so well, Jude. “I read recently that the Chinese, to whom we’ve contracted so much of our labor, are looking to contract it out to Africa now that their earning standards have raised”. Yes. The other evening I saw part of a documentary (couldn’t bear to watch all of it), which showed how a large part of the world’s leather is now produced in Ethiopia. The conditions for humans and animals alike were appalling. Once again, you saw blind greed at work. All those f**** high fashion handbags women ‘must have’, for example. The fashion trade stinks. And I doubt if I’ll ever buy leather again after seeing that.
So (has anyone noticed how many people are beginning their sentences with “so” these days? So is the new ummmmm …) the stars impel, they don’t compel — that’s the old saw, Fe, although anyone living through a Pluto transit might question that! Still, choice is always ours.
The Bangladesh story is tragic, Lizzy — one more set of poster children for worker rights and dignity, one more example of the western worlds love of disposable excess. I read recently that the Chinese, to whom we’ve contracted so much of our labor, are looking to contract it out to Africa now that their earning standards have raised. There’s always someone poorer than ourselves to shift the dirty work off to, isn’t there! Pitiful!
You’ve got some terrific ideas there, Patty; the kind that will make all the difference in reinventing ourselves at some point. They’re also the kind of innovative thinking that Congress has forbidden USPS to engage in, under penalty of law, since that would give them “unfair advantage” over competitors.
I didn’t defend USPS service for historical reasons in that piece gone by, although I mentioned its original mandate by the founders as a vital service, much like a free press. I defended its usefulness as a provider for rural areas not served in other ways and pointed out that it had been wrongly bound by an unfair mandate to pre-pay retirement benefits. USPS is one more of those traditional institutions so many flat-world’ers and free-market worshippers are anxious to surrender to privatization, replacing government leadership with corporate.
And as for debt, I’m very much in agreement that it should not be ignored, but I feel it necessary to point to the propagandizing of the debt-scare that has put recovery in a straightjacket and poisoned conversation on the many ways stimulus can work, on Keynesian economics as opposed to Supply Side.* Surely there are reasonable ways to downsize government, few of which have been tried lately. Unreasonable cuts across the board like those we’re suffering in the sequester don’t serve the public good, although they may assist the numbers crunched at Treasury and satisfy the zealots.
If we’re going to limit big government, we might start with the half-million new Federal employees working for Homeland Security, added in the last decade, or maybe the thousands of contractors working on foreign shores or even the funding for the impressive, expensive and surreal war-machinery that filled the streets of Boston last week. Let’s reassess their necessity before we cut out mail carriers.
As for pork spending, I’m somewhat conflicted, and really REALLY tired of “either/or” conversations: either we have a robust military or children in poverty get to eat tonight, that kind of thing. The reason states send their representatives to Washington is to look out for local interests. Those interests used to be served in political maneuvering — a carrot and stick drill — that brought home Federal money for necessary projects; i.e., pork. Greed, pride, corruption — the Alaskan bridge to nowhere — ruined all that.
Killing pork-spending entirely leaves state rep’s little to negotiate, and leadership little leverage to turn a vote. If we want to know why congressional matters don’t go as well under Obama as they did under Reagan, for instance, or any other 20th century prez, look at our new and absurdist “purity” on pork spending. Congress, by and large, runs on bribery. Take away the bribes that allow horse-trading a place to happen, and we’re left with lobbyists, ideologues and unethical fools fearful of losing their cushy livelihood.
Chances are excellent that we would have far fewer obsolete bridges and crumbling infrastructure emergencies dotting the landscape if pork spending — reasonable and vetted — was still a viable option. And anyone who reads me regularly knows how I feel about “entitlements,” budgetary cuts to services as opposed to GE never paying a cent in taxes, or Grama throwing her bonnet in the ring to vie for a job at the local greasy spoon. If my heart bled any more as a liberal, you’d be looking for my last words in the obits. Anyhow, thanks, Patty, for your thoughts and an interesting conversation.
If anyone wants an informed progressive economic opinion, read Bob Reich. The USA is in a much better position than Europe at this point, although the more we clench up, the harder it will be to avoid the same fate. We could use some of their activism to push policy, but it’s easier to take up a picket when there’s less to lose, I suspect … DO NOT use that as an affirmation!
Meanwhile, be, I will continue to hope the Space Brothers — who are getting a little free press this coming week — are closer to introducing themselves. We could use a little assist with energy, environment, ad infinitum. And thanks, kiddo, for the projection of a truly sane moment, loaded with potential. I’ll mark next Friday on my calendar and visualize the entire world with a Light bulb shining over its head!
* Here’s a classic on supply side economics from my archives, when Al Frankin was still a funny man, not a Senator — Amen and Amen!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK7gI5lMB7M&feature=player_embedded
Hooked by the TV eye you can only see the lie. What I mean is this: If you base your reporting on what’s gobbled up by the news machine you’ll get a lopsided picture. I think all the raids in American neighborhoods with military vehicles lately are designed to be blown into larger than life proportions by the bend-over-and-take-it-as-long-as-we’re-getting-paid media to inspire fear of God and obedience forever and ever amen.
Social security is best found in face to face human relationships. If you get a perennial food forest going you’ll at least have something to eat when you’re old, and your descendants will have something to eat as long as they don’t destroy the forest. Money is an abstract thing that can and will change along with the desires of the people who have the most of it. I don’t trust the money system and farther than I can throw a semi truck.
I don’t see a need to ‘fix’ what’s broken: how can we say America was ok in the middle 20th century with all the wars and riots and Joe McCarthy not to mention a mad rush to make as many nuclear weapons as possible? So the working class got a few more cookies; a lot of people lived through hell in the years when America was supposed to be working OK. And only now it’s broken? The contract with other living things was broken with everything we ceded to the strong men since the empires sprouted. America was never a democracy. More people are allowed to vote now than ever before, but how can anyone make an informed decision with all the noise? Scientific study says…but this other study says…and who can research anything sufficiently when there ain’t nothin’ up but the rent?
And what up with rent anyway? Someone can own something because they pay for it but how did they get the money? Then they can charge you to live there while you do all the maintenance to keep the shelter cozy. The landlord is nowhere to be seen but gets paid because of this abstract idea of ownership.
America emerged from a deeply broken society. She takes after her parents, England and France who at the time were like drunken teenagers off to college in rebellion towards their mother the Catholic Church who gave birth to all her brat children from an affair with the Moors that she still doesn’t own up to. To go forward from here we need indigenous healing. There’s nothing in the empires that can heal the empires but what’s left of the indigenous people in the lands invaded.
The main thing is food. Food forest. Perennial food forest. When Europeans got here they thought it was a wild garden of Eden; not so. It was a cultivated food forest left over after the mass die off of indigenous Americans from diseases between Columbus and the Pilgrims. Social security is FOOD security not money. Money can come and go and if your food is hitched to the money cart it will come and go with the whims of the money lords.
The argument for not reducing debt has a lot of flaws. What debt should we hang onto? Pork projects are all over the place, and you wrote recently that USPS needed to keep the 6 day delivery schedule because it is an old tradition. Why??? That is forcing people to pay for service they don’t need. Do you really require mail delivery on Saturday? USPS budget used to be around 3 billion dollars a day. A day! And delivery points grow astronomically every year. That is one example, but I can think how USPS could take up the work of some other agencies, simply through their database of information and daily delivery service to every point in the US and its possessions. Why couldn’t they handle the US Census? Why not let them collect the labor statistics? Do you realize how much money the people in the federal agencies make? Most retire at a GS12 or higher, which is anywhere between 102,000 per year and 150,000, unless you are an executive and make over 250,000. Reducing the size of government has got to be a priority. The mailman knows everything and everybody. They know when there is a homeless person living in a vacant house. They know when someone died based on mail stacking up at the door. Why can’t they scan the electric meters and pull in revenue from private industry? Why not have them serve as the unemployment registry? The unemployment numbers are completely false, as we all know. The mailman is the most trusted federal employee, per survey results and they can walk fearlessly through the worst neighborhoods in America. There are entire homeless communities along the banks of the rivers – people living in little tent cities. Where is the media on this? Why are they covering it up and making everyone think everything is swell and that the economy is robust?
You surely must have noticed that our lawmakers never look to themselves for the budget cuts – it is always in the social programs where cuts begin, and now they are all talking reducing cola increases for OASDI, changing the retirement age to 70 – are you shitting me? Do we want grandma to wait tables at 70???
Wonderful! Thanks so much be.
Thanks Jude. I needed that. Enough of the shock and awe already. I’m thinking now about next Friday when Mercury (writing) will be in the degree where Chiron (hand) was discovered. Call it Awareness Day when the handwriting is writ in dayglo.
*Transiting Sun (consciousness) will sextile transiting Chiron (consciousness raising),
*Mercury will sextile Vesta (what we invest ourselves in) in Cancer, symbol of nurturing
*and Mars (action) in earth-sign Taurus will sextile Ceres (Mother Earth) in Cancer (home).
Included in the Support-Your-Planet rally on Friday will be Venus (love) conjunct Sedna (the Sea life), and transiting Mars at 9 Taurus (who sat on Chiron’s discovery degree in the Lunar Eclipse chart on Thursday) will oppose the Chiron chart’s Sun at 9 Scorpio (how aware can you get for Pete’s sake?)
On this coming Friday, the Moon will enter Pisces, and sextile Mercury, and then conjunct Neptune (compassion), followed by Mercury’s sextile to Neptune. A full day of becoming aware of the power we have to make change possible.
be
Thanks for another great piece, Jude. You’re so right about the greed, it’s really hitting home right now with the horrors of what is happening in Bangladesh, “…one of the largest garment industries in the world, providing cheap clothing for major Western retailers that benefit from its widespread low-cost labour”. (BBC)
“…this new place/space we inhabit asks us for a different set of intellectual and sensory skills than that last place in which we dwelt”. Yes, this is so true.
Looking not to our stars but to ourselves. Good one, Judith.