C Berg's Open Salon Blog

One Million Hoodies

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 15:03:18 -0400

It is a sad day to know that a young black man in Florida was killed without remorse. I hate what we have done to others for the sake of being right...richeous.

Our gun laws are terrifying. Carrying a gun should be a crime, not a right.

Democracy for Sale

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 21:01:13 -0500

We talk to Channel 7 News, on a snowy Iowa day, with temperatures hoovering between 4^o and 12^oF. Twelve to fourteen hardy souls braved the snowstorm to stand on a busy streetcorner across from the new Federal Courthouse built in the floodplain after the old one was flooded out in 2008.

TODAY, January 20th, 2012, MovetoAmend.org called a national day of action. Occupy the Courts took place all over the United States and at the Supreme Court in Washington D.C. This is the first anniversary of the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court which removed all accountability for Corporate Funding of political campaigns. It must not stand.

Note the Farmers Market sign in the background. The new, non-corporate local economy, and the protesters.

I have returned to the freezing street corner, walking quickly through the snow dodging cars on the busy Eighth Avenue corner to join my eclectic group of friends and compatriots.

Two CR Move to Amend activists, Judith and Ashley, freeze in front of the yet unfinished courthouse. Later we enjoy coffee and soup at a locally owned coffee shop, The Blue Strawberry. We vote with our dollars.

We are in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; famous for the Flood of 2008 that destroyed 3,000 houses, every government office, several schools, the Department of Education, sheriff, police, and fire departments and many churches, and the Mother Mosque of America.

This state should be more famous for the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and intelligence than pigs and corn and the resulting pollution from corporate feed lots and corporate farming. With all the farming toxins in our soil and water, I'm afraid we'll become famous for cancer, autism, MS, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and dementia.

I am freezing. I know we have to do something. Maybe this demonstration will draw attention to the eroding rights and freedoms guaranteed to We-the-People by the U.S. Constitution.

I can only hope so as I stomp my feet clad in new Uggs as I too support the corporate monster. I cross the busy street another time, to get another shot with my iPhone of the signs and the demonstrators. I wait obediently each time for the “WALK” signal.

I wrap a black antique wool horse blanket over my down overcoat, pulling it tight under my chin as I hold my borrowed sign, “MONEY # VOTES,” sometimes in my mouth, when my hand is too cold to grasp it. I left my dog Frankie in the four-wheel drive Chevy crew cab truck. Probably would get cruelty to animals if I had her marching on the sidewalk with me. Hey, she could have a sign, “I am NOT A PERSON.”

How could the Supreme Court give corporations the right to spend as much money as they wanted on political election through political action committees with no disclosure or accountability of any sort? They said that Corporations were “persons” with a right to “free speech!”

And where is OUR right to free speech? Drowned out by the big mouths, the big budgets of mega-corporations who have swallowed up small business and now hold the politicians and the American people hostage.

“If you disagree with us, or don’t let us have our pipeline, we’ll run an ad campaign against you like no other. And we know it doesn’t even matter whether it is true or not. If we say it enough times in enough places, the public will believe US, not you.”

Corporations rule because we allow it. We buy their products. We believe their lies. All the time we have this feeling that there is something not right about this. There is something NOT RIGHT about a corporation have the same rights as a PERSON.

Is a corporation a person? Can it register to vote? Does it have compassion for others? Does it stand trial in Texas for murder? What kind of friend would a corporation be when it’s sole purpose for existence is to make money for its shareholders? That is how it is defined. If anyone who works in the corporation wants to have compassion for the people, employees or customers, they will be fired unless the company makes money from it.

I understand the Corporate Personhood. It gives corporations so much power that we can’t afford to let it stand.

Corporations, as (immortal) persons, have a right to privacy. The EPA and regulatory agencies can not make surprise visits. How does that work for regulating pollution?

They have the right to free speech, thus can donate unlimited amounts of money to any cause they want without having to tell anyone. They have the right to OWN our DNA for genetic pharmacology, and the DNA of 80% of the seeds farmers now use, and will continue making “franken-seeds,” “franken-fish,” and everything else they can get their hands on as only two or three companies own all of the seeds in the world. We should be protected from these deadly experiments, but the FDA is riddled with former corporate officers who were put in place to prevent regulation of their companies.

Monsanto has just purchased Blackwater, the notorious hired guns of Iraq who have a rule in their charter saying that no one is allowed to bring rape charges against any of their soldiers. Monsanto is exercising its right to bear arms and create a militia.

There is only one way to stop this flood of human rights out the door. Pass a constitutional amendment that says what we all know...WE THE PEOPLE of the United States of America are natural born people, not immortal corporations. Corporations were meant to have limits, and used to operate “for the common good.” Can you imagine a corporation operating for the common good today?

We-The-People need to take back our power.

That is what we are doing today. Standing outside in freezing weather, saying that we are here, we are people, and corporations are not.

Become part of our grass-roots movement. MovetoAmend.org

We the People of every political persuasion value our freedom and our right to have a say in our government, not to be shouted down behind barrages of ads. One by one our cities and states will pass resolutions removing corporate personhood, and we will again be free.

As I leave the street corner, hands and feet numb, I am smiling. More cars honked and gave us a thumbs up, grateful for our demonstration of democracy. Only two of the hundreds of cars and trucks were negative, one thumbs down, and another shouting, “Get a Job.”

By the way, here are our jobs: lawyer, mediator, legal secretary, archaeologist, counselor, organic farmer, Peoples Unitarian Universalist minister, student, state employee from Wisconsin who just migrated to Iowa City. (To name the ones I know.)

I am still cold, but I am smiling. I see in these people the quality of freedom, of democracy, that won’t be denied, that keeps coming up like weeds through the cracks in the pavement. No matter what the Corporatocracy does to us, we will keep coming back until we have our freedom back. Just like the Arab spring.

I AM NOT A PERSON....I am Frankie, the blue-eyed bitch (as in girl-dog).

Health No!

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:01:03 -0500

I'm sitting again in my chair near the window. I want to post an "out my window" blog, but something stops me.

The last several days I have been, while not in agony, in considerable muscle and joint pain for unknown reasons. I walked two miles on Wednesday, a bit farther than usual with the weather a pleasant 48 degrees. My knees immediately became inflamed and swelled up. Within hours a cold front pushed its way into east central Iowa. The next morning, everything hurt. I moved slowly through my chores, stepping carefully to make sure my weight was distributed equally on my knee joints. Even a little off and they threaten to give way. I'm a little worried about twisting a knee since the ground is uneven under the snow on my path to the barn. I fed horses four times in the wind and blowing snow, as opposed to my usual twice.

What's the origin of the problem? Toxins in my system, in my new 1910 house's walls, carpet, or re-poured basement from this spring? Not enough water, since I know I've been dehydrated. I read about health, monitoring what I eat, drink and breathe. It's probably a bit of everything, plus stress.

Christmas holidays were a food free for all, or at least I had more food than normal and desserts. The price I paid was the first viral illness that I've had in years. Fortunately it didn't last long.

I know weather affects my joints and muscles, too. I had a good run free of the regular soreness since I started eliminating gluten, dairy, and walking nearly a mile every day. I've had some fatigue, since I got back on the health wagon after New Years. I hate backsliding.

Many illnesses are because of the American lifestyle of processed foods, little exercise, thousands of tons of toxic chemicals added daily to our environment, high carbohydrates, high stress, lack of sleep, little community and family time, and long hours. The great thing is that we together can change that, either by lifestyle choices like eating, exercise, rest, purpose, friendships, or spirituality, or our reducing body's toxic load from our food, water, air, and environment.

Wouldn't it be fabulous to be able to somehow reduce our need for healthcare by 80%?! That's what I'm looking for in my reading and study. That's why I started yoga, the Wahls Diet, and now "Blue Zones."

The idea behind "Blue Zones," were identified in studies by Dan Bruettner a National Geographic writer, of the five healthiest communities in the world. People regularly live longer and healthier lives, and have nine characteristics in common. They are Okinawa, Japan, Sardinia, Italy, somewhere in Greece, a peninsula in Costa Rica, and Loma Linda, California. You can find more information on them online at www.bluezonesproject.com

I joined the Cedar Rapids Blue Zone Ambassadors last week to create a Blue Zone here. Great starting place (ouch.) I can surely get healthier.

Sorry I started out complaining. One thing I know when I'm sick, I remember how it awful it feels and you can't do anything about it! I know I feel more empathy for those suffering from illness.

I am thankful for the health I have. I still can get up each day, work and do most things for myself, and even help others to be healthier. Those who are not blessed with good health, don't give up. Keep looking. Join the Blue Zones, good luck.

Best health to all of us, day by day!

Girl Fight: my Bully

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 15:10:20 -0400

It started the first month of fifth grade, in Mrs. Calvin's class.

I didn't get in Mrs. Dollar's class, and she was the best teacher, I heard. In my old school, I always got the teacher my parents wanted because my dad and granddad were well known and respected real estate developers, so they gave my brother and I the best teachers. At least that's what we thought.

My dad had left the business world to become a social studies teacher in junior high in a new town. The town was 'rough.' There were racial tensions.

Osawatomie was a small town of less than five thousand south of Kansas City with the state mental hospital and reputation for fighting. The West Elementary School principal made a rule to prevent the daily fights after school. Blacks walk on the north side of the streets home, and the whites walk on the south. I had already had one run in with a black girl, Katherine and her friend Dorothy, where they chased me into the girls toilet and spit on me, towering over the metal sides by standing on the adjoining stalls.

But my bully was different. She was one of the most beautiful girls in class, with long wavy red hair, parted on the side with one wave over her eye, just like Jessica Rabbit. She had the same boyfriend all through elementary school, Terry Billam. Terry was a big, smart boy who loved having a girlfriend. He was not shy, and talked as easily with girls as he did with boys.

I first became aware of him when he gave me his oversized boy's ring and asked me to go steady with him. I was new to the school. I had no idea about this "going steady," but I did like boys and it seemed like a good idea at the time. It meant that we would play together during noon hour after lunch, and that he would give me a special valentine for Valentines Day when that came around. I didn't know about Rita.

I liked playing at noon hour and made up games that a lot of the class would join in, including my best friends Irma and Paula Breedlove. The girls would be one team, and the boys would be the other. I called one game "Spider and the Fly." The rules were that the team who was the Spiders would chase the team of Flies, and when they tagged them, they would take their prey to the chain link fence, which was the spider web, and the captured Fly could only leave the fence if another Fly could get to them, tag, and release them without them getting caught again.

What a great excuse for physical contact among the pre-pubescents who really didn't like girls or boys! Terry caught me a number of times, and Irma would free me, to escape be caught again. One time Terry grabbed my arm roughly and I remembered the jujitsu move my dad had taught me and my brothers. I grabbed his arm with both hands and twisted under, landing a very surprised Terry flat on his back. He tried to get back at me as the bell rang to go into the classrooms by grabbing my arm and twisting. I quickly twirled under the arms with him, and maintained my balance. I heard from my brothers that night that it was all around the school that I had "flipped" the toughest guy in school. Great reputation.

Why Terry still liked me, I don't know.

Somewhere in this, I got the word from Dorothy that Rita Hollowman, the red-head, was gunning for me. Rita was known for fighting and a red-hot temper, and she was looking to take me out for stealing her boyfriend. I did the brave thing and hid out on the far corner of the school away from the playground, huddled with Irma. We schemed. What could we do about Rita?

Chalk and a war of words is what came to me. The anonymous insult. There was a narrow alley with a cement wall on the west of the school yard. Irma and I started writing the biggest insult we could think of, "Rita + Jesse." Jesse was a twin who had trouble reading. Rita was nice to him. We wrote and wrote, filling the wall, then running away and hiding again. Dorothy found us and said Rita was REALLY mad now. We decided we'd be safer on the big playground with at least the teachers within yelling distance.

Rita and her posse caught up with us that day. Rita grabbed me roughly by both arms and started yelling in my face, "You take it back!," (I think) while her buddies grabbed Irma to keep my diminutive friend from helping me.

"Girl fight...girl fight...girl fight..." The chanting drew the entire student body into a packed circle around Rita and me. Rita squeezed my arms, pushing me down and pinning me against the asphalt and the cement wall. I started laughing. And laughing and laughing, not fighting back, but laughing as she pushed and shoved, with her face turning as red as her hair.

Teachers came and pulled us apart, dragging each of us in by the arm to the principal's office, while they called our parents. I was mortified. I had never been to the principal's office, I had never had my parents called. I had never fought with anyone except my younger brothers, and everyone knows they don't count. I always got straight A's with the occasional B, and superior, or at least good, marks for deportment. I waited for my mother in the nurses station where I lay down on a couch. The teacher came in and asked me if I wanted to return to class. I refused. When they asked again, I refused again. My mother had to come. Rita went back to class.

The counselor talked to me, the nurse talked to me, and finally my mother talked to me. They finally talked me into returning to class after the afternoon recess. I didn't look at anyone in class, rushing right home after school.

That was a hard year for me, and for a lot of other people. Rita apologized because her sunday school teacher said that she was wrong in picking a fight with me, even if I did do something bad too.

I didn't. My brothers and I shouted, "Hollow-head Hollowman," out my car window the next time I saw her.

Another friend, Margaret, rode her bicycle out to my house to ride my pony. I was not gracious. A few weeks later, Margaret was killed in a car accident, while sitting pre-seatbelt-era on her mother's lap. They slid on icy roads into a road grader and she was thrown from the car. She was the first funeral I went to. I was genuinely sad that I hadn't treated her better, even though we did ride my pony. I cried.

I looked for Rita on Facebook and on the internet. I looked for Terry Billam and Paula Breedlove. I didn't remember Dorothy or Katherine's last names, or that of Irma. The only one from that class I found was Vincent Zubowitz, whose father was the head of the Mental Hospital. He's a doctor now. He didn't seem to remember any of this...but did let me know that I had misspelled "Osawatomie" the first time. (I had two "s.")

Who was the bully? Who was the bullied?

Rita...where ever you are...I'm sorry. I'm really sorry.

I continued to be bullied throughout my whole junior high and high school career. Maybe I was too different. I was prone to blurt out, be aggressive, and be insensitive to others, while being overly sensitive and insecure, depression rebounding with every step. I guess I had to keep learning the lesson I didn't get from Rita.

I am sorry that we didn't learn as children how to deal with each other on an equal, problem-solving basis. I'm sorry we didn't learn to use consensus for decision making as do the children of Denmark. I'm sorry that we didn't learn that there are shades of gray instead of black or white, and that it is okay to be wrong.

I wonder if I got it? I wonder if Rita remembers me?

People Change

Thu, 19 May 2011 10:05:15 -0400

Clouds over Peoples Unitarian Universalist Church, built in 1878. (c) Gazette 2010.

I have spent years trying to control my anger, and I thought I'd succeeded, but instead, I suppressed it. Suppression does not mean you've controlled anger, it just goes underground like a river, and bubbles up in little spring-lets of depression, hate and regret when I least expect it.

That is what happened to me when they, again, voted to sell Peoples Church, built in 1878. It has had a "For Sale" sign out front for two years, but I did not believe that it would sell. Deal after deal fell through. Now it looks like the property is going to shoot up in value due to a coming medical mall, so of course, we have a "secret" buyer.

Why doesn't this person/company doesn't want their name to be known if everything is above board? Of course, they stand to make a lot of money on our property which is a whole block of downtown. I wish I could buy it. They are asking less than I sold my outlying properties for.

So, I am angry and frustrated. I don't want to be. I can tell I am angry because (1) I have written several acerbic posts on Facebook and here, with the idea of telling the truth. (2) I cried on the minister's shoulder in front of the church (3) I denied that I cared at all about selling the church, saying, 'It isn't really MY church" (4) I worried and rethought posting, and even copied, then deleted, posts thinking that it wasn't fair of me to judge what others have done when I don't know all of the circumstances. (5) I have read over and over Lama Surya Das's book, Letting Go of the Person You Used to Be. (6) I have meditated and meditated on non-attachment. (7) I've tried to 'let go and let god.'

I still suffer. I look for the lesson. I look for the meaning, the message of my anger. A wise woman has told me to discover what my emotions are trying to tell me. Another one said to allow my emotions to bubble up to the surface, to feel them fully and not be afraid of them. Feel them bubble up, feel as angry as you can (without acting out), then watch as they recede. That is hard after spending your whole life believing that anger is bad. That sorrow is bad. Is it anger or is it sorrow?

I think of Gibran in The Prophet:

... selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. How else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

Anger can be a call to action, giving energy and life. It could be calling me to fight for salvation of this building. It could also be calling me to reexamine myself and my ecological ethics. It could be calling me to 'let go' of that which I can't control.

It could be calling me to realize that everything is not about me. And sometimes, I just don't know. This is one of those times. I don't know.