The Chinese Year of the Tiger begins on Valentines day this year, making it extra special in my book… 14/2/2010. I was born in the year of the tiger so I confess to being prejudiced in this area . In honor of the upcoming New Year and because I was just going through an old folder full of some favorite quotes from years ago and discovered this wonderful tale of a lost tiger:

A tigress, pregnant and nearly ready to deliver, walked stealthily along the edge of a high cliff foraging for food. She looked over into the grassland below and spied a flock of goats grazing in the sunshine. Hungry as she was, she hesitated because the drop was precipitous. Then she took a great leap, and in the fall she lost her balance. The noise sent the goats scurrying into the forest for shelter. The neck of the tigress was broken as she hit the ground, but in her death throes she managed to give birth to her cub. Then all was silent.

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This post, from my series of posts on the history of Haiti, taken from Dr. Paul Farmer’s book Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor gives excerpts of the history of Haiti, especially surrounding the massacre that took place in Raboteau. An interesting side-note here is that the city of Philadelphia dumped a barge of toxic waste on Haiti, which ended up sitting at the port not far from the slum of Raboteau.

The following are taken from Chapter 2 Pestilance and Restraint: Guantanamo, AIDS and the Logic of Quarantine:

“Landmark human rights trials have taken place recently in Haiti, a first. The most important of these occurred in Gonaïves, once famous as the place where Haiti’s declaration of independence was signed, after the slaves’ decisive 1803 victory over Napoleon’s forces.”

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Paul Farmer has worked in rural Haiti for more than twenty years. He is a doctor and anthropologist and has written several books on health inequalities. Known as Dokte Paul throughout Haiti, he has improved rural health by teaching basic health practices as the best preventive medicine. He has also worked in Russia, Chiapas and various other desperate places and has even had a book written about him: Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World by Tracy Kidder.

I personally don’t know much about Haiti, what I do know has come from reading Dr. Paul Farmer’s book Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor. Dr. Farmer knows the people of Haiti, he has worked with them and listened to them for years, healing them as best he can. The current situation in Haiti could have been avoided to some degree if more people had listened to Dr. Farmer years ago. This book, Pathologies of Power was written in 2004 and gives clear insight into the various levels of abuse that the people of Haiti have been subjected to for years from the international community, most specifically the US of A. There is not much I can do for the people of Haiti from where I sit except to share these insightful words. We are directly responsible for the terrible ongoing situation in Haiti.

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The word “biodynamic” seems to be all the rage these days, so I thought it appropriate to attach it to Rudolf Hauschka’s perspective on Vitamins .

I am one of those people who personally believes that nature got it right the first time…in other words a spoonful of home-made rose-hip syrup provides Vitamin C in a natural form that is easily absorbed and digested by humans–synthetic Vitamin C will never be the same thing. (Despite this I do confess to taking a Vitamin B complex tablet daily at the moment – not something I usually do but a naturopath recommended it so I thought I’d try it out).

Chapter Eighteen of Rudolf Hauschka’s book Nutrition: A Holistic Approach (1967) gave me a completely different perspective of vitamins than I have come across before. His section on the history of food and nutrition also looks at the interaction of humans and food in an entirely different light but I will have to do a separate post for that.

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Quotes in this post are from Nutrition: A Holistic Approach by Rudolf Hauschka.

“We have made use of our thoughts to develop techniques which aim to build a civilization based on comfort. Those who notice how narrow and egotistical this self-serving use of thought is may also find, as they observe themselves, that their thinking has become shadowy and abstract; it can no longer lay hold on the reality of the cosmos. Such individuals may begin to wonder what would happen if they served thinking instead of making it serve them. What would be the result of making oneself a perceptive organ for the power of thought, of concentrating one’s whole being in the act of listening? One who practices this art will find himself able, with this selfless new thinking, to enter the realm of living metamorphosis, where thoughts grow and become expressions of the creative thinking of the cosmos. He comes into touch with objective reality, with essential being.” p 45

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Uncle Walter Johnson, the last of a generation in our family passed away on December 4, 2009. His wife Betty passed away earlier, peacefully and at home, something that Uncle Walter fought hard to have for her. His memorial service was held at Pearson Point in Washington state on the 11th of December, 2009 at the original church built by his ancestor. His grandson Mark, quoted this poem which was one of Uncle Walter’s favorites at the service. I am posting it here in memory of our great Uncle Walter. It sure is a big IF and mighty difficult, but well worth aspiring to.

If by Rudyard Kipling:

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For some reason, that I am still not quite sure of, I have always felt rather offended when someone called me a hippie or compared me to hippies. I recently realized that I have been in denial and have taken the first step in learning to move out of this way of life–admitting that I am, in truth, a hippie.

What has finally prompted this breakthrough? Interestingly enough it came about while reading Vine Deloria’s book Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto. I have been wanting to read this book for many years and finally got around to it last month. Towards the end of the book he discusses the inundation of hippies to reservations in the summer of 1966 and his description of them suddenly hit home for me. The passage follows… The italicized sections are characteristics that describe me in general.

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Last year I started reading The Lost Language of Plants by Stephen Harrod Buhner right around this time of year. I enjoyed it so much that I had to save the rest of it for later, which ended up getting put of for a full year. So, now that I have finally finished it I am eager to start it all over again. This book allows our interaction with plants to become richer and deeper. The end of the book included essays by Carol McGrath, Sparrow, Rosemary Gladstar and John Seed.

I found this particular description in John Seed’s essay about The Bradley Method to be a beautiful and very helpful way to also develop your own inner flora while helping the Earth heal.

From I Call on the Spirit of Herbs by John Seed.

In Australia, two sisters by name of Bradley came up with an exciting technique by which we may slowly invite back the original biotic community from denuded and scarred landscapes.

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I recently read a book I have been waiting a while to get my hands on. Endgame, Vol. 1: The Problem of Civilization by Derrick Jensen. I first read Derrick Jensen’s work in 2006 when we moved to Neversink in the Catskills, among the reservoirs that supply New York City with its world renowned water. His book A Language Older Than Words, rings strong and true, the examples he uses clearly express what we all know.

As it turns out, the USA is so desperate for energy now that it is considering drilling the Marcellus Shale that runs from West Virginia to New York for natural gas. They say the process “should cause minimal environmental harm.” How many times have we heard that before? The number of things that could easily go wrong would result in contamination of the entire NY water supply-how many people is that? Should we call this a terrorist threat? Read the New York Times Editorial: Shale and Our Water.

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Some bedtime reading from my favorite inspiring Little Green Book…

I do not particularly like the word “work.” Human beings are the only animals who have to work, and I think this is the most ridiculous thing in the world. Other animals make their livings by living, but people work like crazy, thinking that they have to in order to stay alive. The bigger the job, the greater the challenge, the more wonderful they think it is. It would be good to give up that way of thinking and live an easy, comfortable life with plenty of free time.

p115 The One-Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming (New York Review Books Classics) by Masanobu Fukuoka

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