Today we're reducing our carbon footprint, helping the sluggish economy, and preparing for the future -- all in one action: we're replacing our heating and air conditioning system with a heat pump "duel fuel" system. The new furnace will have more than twice the energy efficiency as the 22-year old one it replaces. Best of all, because of the heat pump, the furnace won't even click on until the outside air gets down to 30 degrees or so.
I'm excited!
Yes, I tell my friends, we may never get the "payback" in terms of dollars. But we're getting a huge payback in knowing that I'm helping the environment, energy and the economy. Far more than the survival of my individual dollars, this action promotes the survival of all of us for future generations.
I think that's a pretty good investment - a far better one than watching our non-interest-earning dollars molder in a money market account.
If you want to join me, NOW is the time. You can get up to a $1500 tax credit for putting in a more energy efficient heating and cooling system, plus you'll get a rebate from your local utility company.
But most of all, you can join those who know that NOW is the time to do all we can to mitigate the effects of carbon emissions and climate change.
Happy (slightly belated) Earth Day!
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Thursday, April 16, 2009
An Evening with Sandra Cisneros
Tonight I sat among several hundred Latinos, Chicanos, Hispanics of every designation, African-Americans and us just plain white folks to listen to Sandra Cisneros, who came to Kansas City to celebrate the 25th year of The House on Mango Street, her award-winning book that began her professional writing career. Here's what I learned:
1. She has a great heart.
2. Family is important to her, but independence and human rights are even more important. (She defined feminism as respect for equality and human rights for ALL, including gays, children, women, etc.)
3. To prepare for her writing day, she meditates and asks the universe for two things: (1) humility (because the ego gets in the way) and (2) courage, especially the courage to listen for and receive guidance from her highest self, her truest self.
She went on to describe her life as a writer. She listed several pieces of advice on "how to become a writer" and most were pretty typical, but some were surprising. She advised would-be writers to defer marriage and defer parenthood, but not to defer getting a good education to be employable - to have a "day job" while honing writing skills. She also said, "you need to become a human being. Ask for teachers to come and guide you, and they will appear."
If I were Latino, I would be very proud that she represented my ethnicity. I'm not Latino, but I AM a woman, and I felt proud that she represented my gender so well, insisting that we need to in her very words "be in control of our fertility and our sexuality" so that we don't live a life determined by biological drives. I thought "what courage it takes to speak to one's audience in those terms" knowing that many will disagree with that. Many will insist, still, that a woman's first duty is not to herself but to her reproductive role, and that is even more true of women of most non-white ethnic persuasions.
Sandra Cisneros inspired me both as a writer and as a woman. And, perhaps most of all, as a human being, here to do good, she says, in whatever small ways we can (she "collects" stray dogs, has them neutered and pays for their shots).
1. She has a great heart.
2. Family is important to her, but independence and human rights are even more important. (She defined feminism as respect for equality and human rights for ALL, including gays, children, women, etc.)
3. To prepare for her writing day, she meditates and asks the universe for two things: (1) humility (because the ego gets in the way) and (2) courage, especially the courage to listen for and receive guidance from her highest self, her truest self.
She went on to describe her life as a writer. She listed several pieces of advice on "how to become a writer" and most were pretty typical, but some were surprising. She advised would-be writers to defer marriage and defer parenthood, but not to defer getting a good education to be employable - to have a "day job" while honing writing skills. She also said, "you need to become a human being. Ask for teachers to come and guide you, and they will appear."
If I were Latino, I would be very proud that she represented my ethnicity. I'm not Latino, but I AM a woman, and I felt proud that she represented my gender so well, insisting that we need to in her very words "be in control of our fertility and our sexuality" so that we don't live a life determined by biological drives. I thought "what courage it takes to speak to one's audience in those terms" knowing that many will disagree with that. Many will insist, still, that a woman's first duty is not to herself but to her reproductive role, and that is even more true of women of most non-white ethnic persuasions.
Sandra Cisneros inspired me both as a writer and as a woman. And, perhaps most of all, as a human being, here to do good, she says, in whatever small ways we can (she "collects" stray dogs, has them neutered and pays for their shots).
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Rituals
I was reminded of the timelessness of rituals this week when I watched a group of Tibetan monks ritually create a sand mandala, then "de-create" it. All according to instructions from the Buddha himself, passed down through unbroken lineages. In typical American fashion, I had sandwiched in this ritual between other "errands" for the day. As the monks' ceremony went on, I realized I wouldn't make my previous schedule.
I had a clear choice: to leave and cram in everything I "needed" to do, or to stay and sink into the rhythm of this ancient ritual. Never have I been so aware of how rapidly time has shifted for western civilization. And of how great a toll it takes. I stayed.
Once I made the choice to be there, I allowed myself to enter fully those rhythms from another time. I saw how easy it was for them to sweep up the contents of an entire week's work and calmly put the contents in bags to distribute "sand blessings" to those who watched. Nothing was lost, only reconfigured. Nothing destroyed, only changed. And so it will be with our era too.
I had a clear choice: to leave and cram in everything I "needed" to do, or to stay and sink into the rhythm of this ancient ritual. Never have I been so aware of how rapidly time has shifted for western civilization. And of how great a toll it takes. I stayed.
Once I made the choice to be there, I allowed myself to enter fully those rhythms from another time. I saw how easy it was for them to sweep up the contents of an entire week's work and calmly put the contents in bags to distribute "sand blessings" to those who watched. Nothing was lost, only reconfigured. Nothing destroyed, only changed. And so it will be with our era too.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Yesterday
Yesterday - January 20. 2009 -- was, for me, tomorrow. The tomorrow I've waited for, for at least 8 years. No, for much longer -- for more like sixty years. My childhood memories of racism and segregation go back at least that far, my tangled, tortured, treasured trunkfuls of memories. Snapshots, really.
Snap: I'm with Eula Mae and she's ironing my clothes and singing. She drinks water from the special glass we keep for her in our cupboard.
Snap: I'm with my father as he snatches my doll away from a 5 year old black girl. She and I, oblivious to skin tone differences, had been happily playing together while he sold toys to her mother.
Snap: My father patiently explains why we don't allow "colored folks" to go to the same schools, the same churches, the same retaurants. "It's simple," he says. "There's chocolate ice cream and there's vanilla. They're separate. That's all."
Snap: My friend and I are sitting at the back of a New Orleans bus in solidarity with the bus boycotts. As we get up to leave, the white people who stand rather than sit in the back (the black people have filled the front seats, although it's still technically illegal) throw glares of hatred at us. One man spits at me. His spittle mingles with my own tears: tears of defiance, tears of fright, tears of injustice.
And yesterday: let justice roll down like waters keeps humming through my heart.
And I cry again as I sing with Aretha: "My country 'tis of thee...." MY country has finally done the right thing.
Snap: I'm with Eula Mae and she's ironing my clothes and singing. She drinks water from the special glass we keep for her in our cupboard.
Snap: I'm with my father as he snatches my doll away from a 5 year old black girl. She and I, oblivious to skin tone differences, had been happily playing together while he sold toys to her mother.
Snap: My father patiently explains why we don't allow "colored folks" to go to the same schools, the same churches, the same retaurants. "It's simple," he says. "There's chocolate ice cream and there's vanilla. They're separate. That's all."
Snap: My friend and I are sitting at the back of a New Orleans bus in solidarity with the bus boycotts. As we get up to leave, the white people who stand rather than sit in the back (the black people have filled the front seats, although it's still technically illegal) throw glares of hatred at us. One man spits at me. His spittle mingles with my own tears: tears of defiance, tears of fright, tears of injustice.
And yesterday: let justice roll down like waters keeps humming through my heart.
And I cry again as I sing with Aretha: "My country 'tis of thee...." MY country has finally done the right thing.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
A New Year
Yesterday was full of talk about the coming year, and a little reflection about the one dragging its feet before it completely disappeared into the past.
At my writers' group we all talked about our past writing goals, which ones had been met - or surpassed - and which had languished unfulfilled. Some of my writer friends felt frustrated or even guilty that not all their goals had been met. It seems that there's always this tension between setting goals in the first place and then facing the consequences of not accomplishing all of them - versus not setting any in the first place. Or setting vague, ambiguous goals: "submit short stories" or "write more often" - versus specific ones: "submit four short stories by October 2009 or "write 15 minutes every day."
To me it's all a wonderful game, something to do with life that keeps it interesting. but please -- no guilt! no frustration! and no regrets for something not achieved. In all likelihood, something else just as wonderful came along and took its place.
Setting no goals at all is, in my view, a poverty of the imagination. Or maybe just being chicken about the whole thing. Last year I had only one goal: let it unfold. Maybe that was a poverty of the imagination too. A lot did unfold, and I met most of it with equanimity. This year I'm being more specific. This is year 66 - it seems to demand a specificity to define what its journey will be. Route 66 leaps to the mind. Also the year 1066 AD: the Battle of Hastings?
I'll write more on the poverty of imagination later. It's one of the more important aspects of poverty.
Last night, though, there was a wealth of imagination as all spoke of what had been good about the old year, and what we thought lay ahead. Almost all of us reported many good things, and all but one of us saw that what happened to the economy -- the American economy, at least - as ultimately a "good thing." We had no problem with letting go of the values around easy money, rampant consumerism, greed for more, bigger and better. We agreed that what might take its place would be a sturdier framework that would allow for a greater sense of community, interdependence, interconnectedness.
One woman had spent 18 months living and working in Ethiopia. She talked of how Ethiopians did not close the door to their homes, and welcomed neighbors dropping in. And of how she never got comfortable with the custom, kept her door locked. That didn't, however, prevent her Ethiopian friends from opening cabinet and pantry doors when they were invited to her house -- also unsettling until she learned that it was their way of checking to make sure she had what she needed. What was almost unforgivable nosiness in one culture became an act of kindness in another.
Maybe if we all spent time here in America learning one another's hidden assumptions, expectations, values -- and then checking to make sure we each had what we needed -- we could come to a different sense of community.
Things I want to do more of in 2009: Listen. Watch. Sit in silence. Create inner space. Look for ways to create community. Those are not goals, nor even desires, simply an honoring of what arises in the moment.
At my writers' group we all talked about our past writing goals, which ones had been met - or surpassed - and which had languished unfulfilled. Some of my writer friends felt frustrated or even guilty that not all their goals had been met. It seems that there's always this tension between setting goals in the first place and then facing the consequences of not accomplishing all of them - versus not setting any in the first place. Or setting vague, ambiguous goals: "submit short stories" or "write more often" - versus specific ones: "submit four short stories by October 2009 or "write 15 minutes every day."
To me it's all a wonderful game, something to do with life that keeps it interesting. but please -- no guilt! no frustration! and no regrets for something not achieved. In all likelihood, something else just as wonderful came along and took its place.
Setting no goals at all is, in my view, a poverty of the imagination. Or maybe just being chicken about the whole thing. Last year I had only one goal: let it unfold. Maybe that was a poverty of the imagination too. A lot did unfold, and I met most of it with equanimity. This year I'm being more specific. This is year 66 - it seems to demand a specificity to define what its journey will be. Route 66 leaps to the mind. Also the year 1066 AD: the Battle of Hastings?
I'll write more on the poverty of imagination later. It's one of the more important aspects of poverty.
Last night, though, there was a wealth of imagination as all spoke of what had been good about the old year, and what we thought lay ahead. Almost all of us reported many good things, and all but one of us saw that what happened to the economy -- the American economy, at least - as ultimately a "good thing." We had no problem with letting go of the values around easy money, rampant consumerism, greed for more, bigger and better. We agreed that what might take its place would be a sturdier framework that would allow for a greater sense of community, interdependence, interconnectedness.
One woman had spent 18 months living and working in Ethiopia. She talked of how Ethiopians did not close the door to their homes, and welcomed neighbors dropping in. And of how she never got comfortable with the custom, kept her door locked. That didn't, however, prevent her Ethiopian friends from opening cabinet and pantry doors when they were invited to her house -- also unsettling until she learned that it was their way of checking to make sure she had what she needed. What was almost unforgivable nosiness in one culture became an act of kindness in another.
Maybe if we all spent time here in America learning one another's hidden assumptions, expectations, values -- and then checking to make sure we each had what we needed -- we could come to a different sense of community.
Things I want to do more of in 2009: Listen. Watch. Sit in silence. Create inner space. Look for ways to create community. Those are not goals, nor even desires, simply an honoring of what arises in the moment.
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