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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These excerpts are from Dr. Paul Farmer’s book Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor , written in 2004. I am putting up a series of posts from this book, because Dr. Paul Farmer is well respected in the mainstream as well as in the Christian community. He has worked in rural Haiti for more than 20 years. This post shares Yolande’s story, she fled Haiti after being beaten for promoting adult literacy and ended up in Guantanamo where she was treated even worse.

Currently Guantanamo is prepared to receive thousands of Haitian refugees, let’s do everything we can to make sure they will not be treated the same way they were the last time they visited this US base.

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These excerpts are from Dr. Paul Farmer’s book Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor, written in 2004. I am putting up a series of posts from this book, because Dr. Paul Farmer is well respected in the mainstream as well as in the Christian community. He has worked in rural Haiti for more than 20 years. Being a doctor, he is also closely involved with various aid agencies and speaks of the structural violence within our culture that Haitians have been the brunt of since they kicked Napoleon’s ass in 1803 and became the first nation of free slaves that was, unfortunately for them, a little too close to the shores of our ‘great’ nation (USA).

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This week I was finally able to send in my application for Health Insurance in Canada. It has been 4 years since I had coverage, and during this period I was the unhealthiest that I have ever been (so typical eh?). In one of those synchronistic events a friend also sent me the link to the video To Your Health by Meena Nanji and Ofunne Obiamiwe. It is hard to fathom what it means on an individual level when we hear numbers like 47 million Americans do not have health insurance and half of all bankruptcies in the United States are caused by medical bills. Embarrassingly, the US also comes in very low on the scale of universal health coverage–ranked at 37th in the world. This video helps to make these facts personal.

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This is such a beautiful train ride. All up and down the West Coast is gorgeous and we all know, the train is the way to go. They have fantastic windows in the train.

We go through Tacoma and past Boeing, it is a really interesting ride–a pretty good glimpse into the All American Hometown style.

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I haven’t got much money I don’t like to make a show But when it comes to real good friends I love to share my ‘dough’

-By Hal ‘Lucky Luke’ Lucas

Some of you may remember passing round Alaskan Sourdough Starters to your friends and family along with your own yarn of how you came to possess such a precious, delicious, practical and ancient culture. Here is a version I discovered on a scrap of paper mixed in with my grandmother’s recipes:

This starter originated from the Sour Doughs of Alaska in early gold rush days, and has been handed down from igloo to ice-box to electric refrigerator and propagated through friendship channels. The original sample was brought from the Yukon. It was smuggled out by a successful miner who found the original in a deserted miner’s cabin on Sour Dough Creek; he in turn, shared his secret with the Captain of a four-master sailing vessel. The Captain gave a sample to the mayor of San Francisco. From him it was stolen by the mayor’s cook who in turn sold ’starts’ to wealthy Spanish Grandees. My sister in San Jose got her ’start’ through connections from a hermit who lives back of Mt. Hamilton.

(You may pass this along to your friends, but be sure to add your own flavor to the above story.)

This recipe followed the above yarn:

Sour Dough Hot Cakes

Serves 2 to 3 people

Do this at night:

• Take 2 cups of sifted flour and add
• 1 c milk and one of warm water more or less

Mix in your sourdough starter to thickness similarly to hot cake batter. Cover with oiled paper and set over night in a warm place; (on top of the pilot burner is a good place.)

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Horizon Herbs is easily my favorite seed company. But that’s simply because I love reading the seed catalog that they send out. It is jam packed with useful herbal information as well as some interesting anecdotes of adventures to find seeds. They have an incredibly extensive range of hard to find, never-heard-of-before, plants and every year they have more. As I mentioned in my article on the vernal equinox, I also have special feelings towards this company because they recently, unwittingly helped to establish proof of my whereabouts for Canadian immigration. The catalogs are my bedtime reading.

My wishlist for 2009:

I was very excited to find pau d’arco and gotu kola in the catalog. I have used pau d’arco for years to support my immune system.

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Written by a Western Plowman in September 1883, published in The Shaker Manifesto.

The origin of many troubles which afflict mankind may be traced to a disordered stomach. No doubt but some of our bad legislation may be attributed to indigestible hotel breakfasts, and the burdens of sorrow produced by social disturbances have no more prolific contributor than the disordered stomach which produces disordered minds.

To raise the average of mortality, happiness and prosperity of the people, the science of eating must be given a more prominent place in our educational system. Through ignorance, and much of it inexcusable, we eat disease, we drink it and breathe it.

What to eat, how to cook it and when and how to eat it are certainly subjects of study, quite as practical and beneficial as the study of the conjugation of Greek verbs.

Isn’t it a little strange that while we employ the best medical skill we can obtain to cure disease, we turn our stomachs over to ignorant chefs and allow them to cram it with dietetic abominations which ruin its functions and produce disease?

If talent, genius and skill are looking for a good missionary field, the kitchen is the great uncivilized realm. We want the coming generation to be taught how to cook intelligently.

Give the stomach good, wholesome food, and it will fill your veins with pure blood which in turn will give you a healthy brain and drive away the whole brood of manufactured troubles.

We have had education for the parlor, and we are a nation of dyspeptics. Now, as a matter of experiment let us try education for the kitchen.

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Article published in the Far West Almanac May 2008. Inspired by the book SELU: Seeking the Corn-Mother’s Wisdom by Marilou Awiakta

Lately when I find myself thinking about roots, it isn’t long until I start thinking about corn. Edible corn originated in Central America, a gift of the creator in the form of a “catastrophic sexual mutation” about 7,000 years ago. Now it is prevalent all over the world. Chinese are using it to make cheap alcohol and Italians for creamy polenta. Corn is in nearly every processed food item in the supermarket either as corn syrup or corn starch, and is being used to make ethanol for bio-fuel.

Corn was given to the Europeans as a gift, our stories tell us, when they were on the brink of starvation in a new land. Although we celebrate Thanksgiving every year in communion with family to remember those great gifts we were given, the gift of corn has ultimately been disrespected and violated by the “gift” the Europeans gave back to the Americas. This “gift” is a mentality that is ultimately self-serving and greedy — entirely against the spirit of corn.

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