In Bloomington, Indiana, for me and my friends at least, the living is relatively easy, and at least somewhat conscious. There’s Indiana University, there’s a relatively enlightened city administration, there’s all sorts of glorious music and theater and art and the vast beauty of rolling, forested hills and lakes nearby; and, thanks to continuous sowing of new crops of permaculturists, there is a growing cadre of young permaculturists here who are now taking root, beginning to purchase or rent little urban and rural homesteads, to cultivate common gardens in town (e.g. the GANG garden, the Community Orchard), in front of businesses (e.g., Garden the City), and to design and produce products for sustainability (e.g. gardentowerproject.com). Real, local food has long been a staple of this town, even though as of two years ago, the city’s Peak Oil Task Force Report noted that only 2% of the food Bloomingtonians eat is grown in the state of Indiana!
So I do live in a sort of bubble. (Plus, no TV and read only the local newspaper in print.) And I do tend to ignore the state of our mass unconsciousness. So the last post, by Phil Rockstroh, felt like the usual rude, jolting reminder, what I’m faced with whenever I drive north to Indianapolis (called “Generica” for its miles and miles of wide roads and big box stores) or heaven forbid, get on any Interstate, another of which, BTW: is going to edge this town soon, despite a long, mighty, dedicated grassroots David/Goliath struggle against it. I69: to connect Mexico to Canada, easing the way for drug runners.
Here’s Steven Lendman on the same depressing subject, how it has dumbed down democracy.
• opednews.com: A Nation of Morons.
And yet, and yet. Only a few years ago, organic school gardens were a strange, pioneering concept. As was the idea that school kids need real vegetables and fruit for lunch. (Which reminds me: has the concept caught on with hospitals yet? Or do we still serve dead — and deadly — food to “patients.” And, when oh when will they turn into impatients, shove that jello and cake and canned beans off the tray to the floor?))
But now, check this out!
• seedsofchange.org: Seeds of Change to donate 25 million seeds to support school organic gardens.
Okay, now here’s where it gets weird. Here’s where we have to expand our minds to include both good and evil.
First, this. More people go to prison. More prisons are privatized. Sometimes the conditions of privatization require that states guarantee prisons remain at 90% occupancy!. . . Not sure whether I read that in the following article, and don’t want to reread, but I did see it recently somewhere.
• activist post: Private Prison Corporations are Slave Traders
Then, this. Yep, in a category called “sustainable prisons” . . .
• blogs.evergreen.edu: Gardens Take Root at McNeil Island Prison
Okay, so putting more and more poor people in prison where they learn how to garden, and then hopefully they actually get out of prison and keep gardening? This (and I mock, though it may be true) might be one component of pulling us out of the “downward vortex” that awaits us, says the Royal Society, in its study, “People and Planet,” unless we “equalize.” I mean, duh! They needed a “study” to figure that out?
• commondreams.org: Humanity Must Stabilize Population, Consumption, or Face Downward Vortex of Ills
You tell me how to integrate all this conflicting information. Not that some of it’s true and some false. Worse! It’s all true! The good and the bad! Solution (for me): choose the good. Choose what has heart and meaning. Follow it. Like, for me, keeping up with this blog and organizing the GANG garden. That’s enough for this one small being. The two (sometimes conflicting) parts of me, mind and body, focusing through spirit, and operating in harmony. Lately. And usually! Hopefully!
Here’s one more post, a recent channeling that I found useful.
