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Category Archives: politics

I Vote for Clean Air

31 Monday Oct 2016

Posted by judithar321 in environment, health, politics

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Clean Air Moms Action, Moms Clean Air Force

I registered to vote in Massachusetts nearly 40 years ago, and I’ve cast my ballot in a voting booth there ever since. So when we moved to Portland, Oregon this month, registering to vote was at the top of my to-do list. The stakes are so high and far-reaching this year —especially when you factor in the fate of our planet — that the possibility of NOT voting is unthinkable.

As  Dominique Browning, senior director of Moms Clean Air Force points out, “ We have a choice for president that is going to influence our lives, and our children’s lives, and our grandchildren’s lives…”

Fortunately, my new state not only makes it easy to register, its system of voting by mail allows citizens to focus on candidates and issues rather than on simply getting to the polls.

My ballot arrived last week and I was determined to wield my voting power with laser-like precision to ensure that Oregon continues to do its part in protecting our environment. This meant going beyond my (obvious) choice for president to learn about the positions of down-ballot candidates, and the implications of local ballot initiatives.

A post about ballot measures on the Oregon Environmental Council’s (OEC)  website was particularly informative. I spoke to its author, OEC’s Health Outreach Director,  Jen Coleman, about why voting “yes” to affordable homes, for example, would also help improve air quality in Portland. She explained,

To have healthy people, we need healthy places for them to live. Our hot spots of air pollution in Portland are linked to low income and minority communities.

Therefore, she wrote in her post,

Affordable housing is integral to meeting environmental goals. High housing prices have pushed lower-income residents out to the edges of urban centers where there are fewer transportation choices. The closer people can live to school and work and accessible transit, the less they need to drive—and less driving results in cleaner air and safer streets.

I also asked Jen about assessing local candidates’ commitment to supporting clean air in my new state. While she couldn’t tell me how to vote, she advised me to read the voters’ handbook. In addition to descriptions of candidates and ballot measures, it includes arguments for and against, as well as endorsements, for each. As she said,

The handbook that comes with your ballot is pretty amazing. Look at those recommendations and base your vote on the assessment of those you trust. A tiny race can make a huge difference in how we use our resources.

With that in mind, my husband and I sat across from each other at our dining room table last night and paged through the handbook as we marked our ballots.

img_3590

This afternoon, we’ll send them on their way, confident that our votes  will have an impact that reaches beyond our new hometown and for generations to come.

Now, dear readers, it’s your turn. Please, take the pledge.

PROMISE TO VOTE!

“This post was produced with support from Clean Air Moms Action. All opinions are, of course, my own.”

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Rules of Engagement

19 Friday Dec 2014

Posted by judithar321 in environment, friendship, inspiration, meditation, politics

≈ 4 Comments

IcedSmoke1

A few weeks ago, the dried blossoms on our smoke tree froze into spidery orbs of  ice. They hung from bare branches like fragile Christmas tree ornaments. And then, just like the real stuff, the iced smoke drifted away into the cold, steady, rain.

Life’s moments, whether they are filled with pure joy or something more complex and challenging, are just as precious and transitory as nature’s spontaneous beauty. Every one of them is worth noticing and savoring.

To notice, to savor, to argue, and, especially, to listen, are all acts of engagement. When we do those things through every kind of moment, even the ones that bruise our ego, or try our patience, they are also acts of love. I’ll do those things for my husband and sons every moment and for all time.

But, because I also love this world, there are moments I will no longer engage with. Those are ones taken up by voices that say we can’t or won’t make things better.

Instead, I’m turning up the volume on those who want to build, create, improve and are proud to turn their desire to save the world into action. That’s where my time is going in 2015.

When you think about all of time—past, present, and future—we each have only a few moments. And then, poof, they float away like an icy wisp of smoke in the rain.

***

Apologies for the multiple postings. WordPress is not my friend today 🙂

Cruising the Willamette with Henry and Bob

08 Monday Dec 2014

Posted by judithar321 in friendship, pets, politics

≈ 4 Comments

ice circle

It is an icy Monday morning here on the East Coast. Bundle up as I might (right now Karina and I are both under a down comforter) fingers, toes, and everything in between are in a constant state of chill. The days are short and dark, with occasional glimpses of sun. I could have named this post Frozen, after the movie, but let’s not go there.

Instead, let’s take a boat down Oregon’s Willamette River with our friend Scott and his able crew members, Henry and Bob.

two sailors

Here they are, two boat-worthy swains who hop right up on the gunwales and walk around. Following their example, landlubber Karina had no choice but to be brave, though she stuck close to the humans. Just in case.

brave Karina

Henry has the warm, welcoming personality you would expect from a super-sized golden retriever. Don’t let the grey hairs fool you, he truly is forever young.

Henry

Happy to be with us. Happy wherever he is, whether it was hanging out with Karina on the kitchen floor or following her nimble, mountain goat feet as she danced her way through the lush Oregon forest.

rest time

Log walkers

Bob’s is a quiet, somewhat mysterious, behind-the-scenes presence. He’d wander in and out of view, prompting the oft-asked question, “Where’s Bob?”

Once we landed on the beach by the river, he seemed to have disappeared altogether. Scott pointed to a black dust mop moving swiftly through the water just off shore. Who knew that dachshunds were such prodigious swimmers? A dog after my own heart, who swims to his own drumbeat, and who possesses the most noble of profiles.

noble profile_bob

Karina and I feel warmer already.

Thank you Leslie and Scott for a September weekend that will warm us for months to come. And, oh yes, thank you to a certain someone, who brought us together from her far away perch in Arles.

The NW Portland pack.

The NW Portland pack.

And speaking of canine friendship, please cross your fingers and toes for a friend of mine. She has been looking for the right dog for months and months. This weekend, we are checking out a pup who we hope is THE ONE. I’ll keep you posted, and thank you!

Fighting for the Light

11 Tuesday Nov 2014

Posted by judithar321 in environment, health, meditation, politics

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

2014 election

espalier_long

Last week we had an election. The results mean that those of us who view things like clean air and health care as basic rights are going to have to work harder and speak more loudly and clearly than we ever have before.

espalier_closeup

We have to wedge ourselves into the cracks, take root, and push through the wall of short-sighted self-interest.

breakingfree

Last week’s election results were dispiriting, but we can’t give up, we have to get through to the other side of that wall, and climb that fence.

Fence

Until we can light it up from the inside out.

lit from within

“Prickly” about Climate Change

22 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by judithar321 in environment, politics, travel

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

climate change, Moms Clean Air Force

 

Dry as dust-2

I was working on a post this week about unsolicited advice that was based on an incident at my gym. I was trying to be light and funny about something that many of us don’t appreciate (according to an online poll, 62 percent of us don’t like receiving such advice). I shared it with an editor who usually loves my work. She was happy to hear from me, and even offered to publish the piece, but she ended her email this way,

“p.s. but…it does seem to me (speaking as your editor) that you do come across in this post as a bit too prickly over such a trivial offense.”

Given that I’d rather not appear prickly when it comes to something trivial, we agreed to deep-six the post.

I am, however, proud to be prickly about preserving the environment. The scenery I saw as I traveled from coast to coast and back brought to mind the words from “America the Beautiful,” while it also made me more passionate about halting climate change.

My post today on Mom’s Clean Air Force shares one of the lessons I learned while on the road.

I am also prickly about boycotts. I don’t participate in random ones espoused by individuals. I want my actions to have real meaning and to carry real weight—which they only can when my voice is part of a larger group.

But I wholeheartedly support organized boycotts and petitions for causes I believe in — especially ones that put corporate polluters in their place. For that reason, I signed this petition asking EBay to withdraw its support of ALEC, a group that has pledged to launch “a political tsunami against EPA.”  I hope you will too. You can read about why we are boycotting EBay here. 

When it comes to important stuff like climate change, I’m prickly — and proud of it.

 

 

Winter Nap

29 Saturday Mar 2014

Posted by judithar321 in environment, friendship, inspiration, politics, travel

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

anti-Semitism, Four and Twenty Blackbirds, French municipal elections, Groovy Green Livin, Lost in Arles

Winter Nap

Last weekend we came out of hibernation long enough to drive down to New York City. Our efforts were rewarded by some actual, real-live spring weather. The sun was warm, and there was no snow or ice.

Spring!Bike

As I soaked my sore feet after a day of tramping around on the dry sidewalks, I realized this was the first time in months I’d worn a pair of real shoes. 

We ate pie for breakfast two mornings in a row in an old building in Brooklyn, where the walls were lined with tin.

Patina

Across the bridge, in Manhattan, I sat outside on a bench drinking a fancy tea latte, admiring the symmetry and color of a building across the street, while a woman paced back and forth during what turned into a very long phone call.

Guerin Bronze

A few blocks away, we peered into a cemetery hidden away behind stone walls and a locked gate.

Spanish Cemetary

 

Cemetary1

I was reminded of this cemetery a few days later, when my friend Heather Robinson wrote a post about the results of municipal elections in France, where the Front National—an extreme right party, founded by known anti-Semitic and Holocaust denier, Jean-Marie LePen—is gaining ground.

That what happens in France matters to us all was brought home today, when I saw this post by another friend, Lori Alper. Lori, who lives one town away from me, writes about anti-Semitic incidents involving some of the youngest students at her son’s elementary school.

While hibernation is a fine strategy for staying warm during an endlessly frigid winter, it is not a good way to live. We may wish that prejudice and hate are hidden and locked away like the dead in that cemetery, but in truth they are more like tenacious weeds growing under those dry, New York City sidewalks. They claw their way into the light through the tiniest of cracks.

 

In October, Red Is the Color of Home

24 Thursday Oct 2013

Posted by judithar321 in books, environment, inspiration, politics

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Bill McKibben, home, Oil and Honey, red, seasonal cycles, seasons

maple-closeup

What is home? It is the place where waking up to the sound of pots clanging in the kitchen, means that Dad is making his special Sunday pancakes. It is the rattle of the dog’s tags as she trots from room to room. Home is the velvety report of a son’s deep laugh seeping through the floorboards as he watches late night TV.

Home is warm, comfortable, familiar.

Home is also found outdoors in the honking of geese as they fly over the house during their spring and fall migrations. In June, it is where the hummingbirds return year after year to drink the nectar my husband prepares for them.

Home is predictable, reliable. It is found in the cycles of this gorgeous, irreplaceable planet — in its winter whites, spring greens, summer yellows, and autumn reds.

berries

field berries

In his book, Oil and Honey: The Education of an Unlikely Activist, writer and environmental activist Bill McKibben shares his “…two lives lived in response to a crazy time.” One life is that of McKibben the activist who travels around the world, fighting against the fossil fuel industry. That public, hectic life is punctuated by a calmer, more soothing one spent in the beeyards of his home state of Vermont, where he watches “… a very different, very beautiful way of dealing with a malfunctioning modernity.”

In describing the lessons he learns about environmental activism and beekeeping, and the facts and data that make halting climate change an urgent matter, McKibben is also composing an ode to home.

rake

No matter where he is or what he is doing, McKibben’s fight to save our planet is driven by an intense longing for home —both the planet that he and his fellow boomers grew up on, and his actual domicile. That desire weaves in and out of the narrative like a red thread through a complicated tapestry.

libraryshrub

“The old cycle we’ve always known is very nearly gone, but not quite,” he concludes. “It lingers yet, and while it does the fight is worth the cost.”

geraniumLonggeranium close

Nature Girl

21 Saturday Sep 2013

Posted by judithar321 in adult children, aging, environment, inspiration, politics, writing

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

350.org, Bill McKibben, environmental activism, great horned owl, nature, Oil and Honey

Birches

Never mind what the dream was about. It could have been about so many things: my mother-in-law’s passing last month; my kids being far away; my own mortality, my husband’s, the dog’s… But in the moment of the dream I felt as deep and raw a sense of loss as I’ve ever experienced in waking life.

But then I woke up, and poof, the feeling evaporated. Soon after that, I realized that I haven’t heard the owl this summer. Usually I’ll hear him in the wee hours through the bathroom window, a muffled hoo, hoo, hoo, hoooo floating softly over the grass between our house and the woods.

His (her? their?) call has been a comfort these past 20 years. I first heard the owl a year after we’d moved in while I was in the midst of cancer treatments. That summer and fall, I found the nature here—the owl hooting from the woods, while I lay awake, feeling my poisoned blood pulsing in my abdomen, or a pheasant strolling across the lawn on a sunny afternoon when I was waiting for test results— to be comforting omens.

Being in nature grounds us. And, in fact, it’s good for writers. “Nothing coaxes jumbled thoughts into coherent sentences like sitting under a shade tree on a pleasant day,” writes Carol Kaufmann in last week’s New York Times, “With a slight breeze blowing, birds chirping melodies, wee bugs scurrying around me and a fully charged laptop or yellow legal pad at hand, I know I’ll produce my best work.”

I also heard writer and environmental activist Bill McKibben speak this week about why we must fight to prevent approval to complete the Keystone XL pipeline as one step in solving our climate crisis. He is so smart, so sensible, so inspiring, I hope everyone will join me in reading his new book, Oil and Honey: The education of an unlikely activist.

Nature is one of the things that truly matters to all of us, whether we know it or not. It is what binds us to this earth. We can’t live without it.

Now when I think back to that dream, I don’t worry about my mortality or my family’s — or even the owl’s, who if it was the same one, lived a good, long life.

No, I worry about the end of nature as we know it, and how little time we have to halt its decline. Not succeeding would be the greatest loss of all.

naturegirl

Beyond the Hijab: Woman to Woman in Morocco

07 Tuesday May 2013

Posted by judithar321 in adult children, friendship, inspiration, politics, travel

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

culture, henna tattoos, hijab, Morocco, Peace Corps, women, Womens Voices for Change

Henna tattoos back

Morocco was never on my travel wish list. New Zealand, Iceland, and Brazil were all possibilities. But a visit to a predominately Muslim, developing country in northern Africa? I hadn’t even considered it. All of that changed, however, when my 26-year-old son Karsten joined the Peace Corps.

The fact that he was assigned to work there not only put Morocco squarely on my radar, it allowed me to transcend the typical tourist experience and literally break bread with ordinary Moroccans—people whose language, dress, and culture are very different from my own.

I’ve been home just a couple of weeks, and I’m still sifting through the many sights, sounds, and tastes of my trip, yet there’s one aspect that stands out—the connection I made with the women I met there.

My first introduction to a Moroccan woman was, oddly enough, during a video chat. My husband and I were conversing with our son shortly after he had arrived in Sefrou for training, when he invited his host mother, Fatima, to join us. At this point, Fatima had already nursed our son through one illness and had given him his Moroccan name, Karim.

In what remained of my high school French, I tried to thank her for taking such good care of “mon fils.” While my French vocabulary failed me, my facial expression and our immediate connection did not. “Avec plaisir,” Fatima replied with a smile that blew through the miles and burst through the screen like a warm breeze.

A year later, Karsten now lives in Tinghir, a city located south of the High Atlas Mountains, where he teaches life skills, like typing and AIDS awareness, to a co-ed group of local teens. During the week my husband and I visited him this past April, he and a Moroccan counterpart organized games and exercises to help his students develop confidence and communication skills.

“There is definitely a feeling of sisterhood among the women here,” he told me one morning as we walked through town.

I felt the truth of that observation almost immediately. On the first full day after we arrived in Tinghir, I found myself sitting upstairs from Karsten’s place in his landlord’s apartment, surrounded by a group of women wearing the traditional hijab (head scarf) and ankle-length skirts or dresses.

Laila, who speaks a little French, was decorating my hands with henna. Rachida, who had her young daughter in tow, spoke to me in English. The rest, friends and relatives of my son’s landlady, chattered away in the local Berber dialect.

Without my son present to translate, I did a lot of nodding and smiling. But Rachida clearly wanted more than just small talk.

“What do you think about the head scarf?” she asked me. (Most of the mature women I encountered in Morocco wore the traditional head scarf and a long dress or skirt — at least out in public —but not everyone does.) I told her that I thought it was fine if a woman chooses to wear it. She nodded her head and said that the “choice” was sometimes dictated by a strict father or husband. I had the feeling that Rachida was talking about herself. She clearly regretted not continuing her education. Once they are married, she told me, “Moroccan women are responsible for everything.” It was a lament I was to hear from other women as well.

I felt the full force of Rachida’s assertion a few days later when my husband, Karsten, three of his male friends, and I drove through a nearby town, passing cafes overflowing with male customers, while the few visible women were on the road, laden with babies, groceries, or bundles of alfalfa they carried home on their backs to feed the family donkey.

On that day, my femaleness, even more than my Western appearance made me self-conscious. I felt truly alien, oppressed by the difference between this place I was visiting and the place I call home.

Yet those differences seemed to dissipate whenever I was with a Moroccan woman; even if my daily outfit of jeans and a long-sleeved T shirt clashed with her long dress and hijab, even if we couldn’t communicate through talk, her friendliness, interest, and generosity fostered a feeling of camaraderie that coursed through our time together.

Where did this feeling of sisterhood come from? Part of it, I’m sure, had to do with the high esteem these women have for my son and the respect he shows them. In fact, one conversation I overheard between Peace Corps volunteers during an earlier leg of our trip was focused on ways they could teach their young male charges to treat girls with more respect.

Moroccans are naturally hospitable, and making strangers feel welcome is an ingrained part of their culture. Family is very important there as well, so having “Karim’s mama and baba” in their home was considered something of an honor. Beyond that—and I don’t know this for sure—I believe that our mutual femaleness in a male-dominated society triggered the sense of sisterhood that Karsten observed, and that I experienced.

For example, one morning, Aisha, Karsten’s landlady, showed me how to make the flat, round loaves of bread that are served with almost every meal. As she demonstrated her muscular kneading technique, rotated loaves of bread in and out of the oven, and cut up vegetables for a tagine—all accomplished with her 2-month old daughter strapped to her back—we also managed to commiserate, in our mutually limited French, about the challenges of nursing a newborn throughout the night.

Surprisingly, this feeling of oneness wasn’t just limited to encounters with adult women. The hugs and kisses I received from the 12-year-old daughter of Karsten’s Tinghir host family made me feel like a revered and much-loved aunt. And then there was our 10-mile trek to Todra Gorge with Karsten’s Leadership Club.

The walk, which wound through the local oasis and up a dusty road to the gorge, took about four hours. While some of the boys reached out to me, I spent most of the hike surrounded by teenage girls who were determined to teach me a few words of Berber. By the time we reached the gorge, I had a vocabulary list. By the end of the day, I had been given cookies and candy, offered the use of a coat and some lip gloss, and had acquired several new Facebook friends.

I was lucky enough to see these girls on two more occasions, when we accompanied Karsten to his classes at the cultural center. I will never forget Hayat, who was both patient and persistent when teaching me how to introduce myself and ask others their name in her native language. And I will cherish my conversations with Kaoutââr, who will soon be leaving for the university to study medicine and whose nose is constantly in her schoolbooks. Nor will I forget the feisty Soukaina or the other Hayat, a tall, lanky athlete in a headscarf who can out-throw, out-catch, and out-run all the boys when participating in my son’s American football club.

Several times during our visit, Karsten mentioned the Peace Corps mission to help “promote better understanding of other people on the part of Americans.” I’d say they are achieving that mission.

The next time I look at a photograph of a Moroccan woman, I won’t see a stranger, I’ll see a friend.

Henna tattoos palms

 This post was also published today on Women’s Voices for Change.

We Are the Good Guys

14 Wednesday Nov 2012

Posted by judithar321 in environment, politics, writing

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Cormac McCarthy, dystopian literature, hurricane Sandy

A couple of summers ago, my sons encouraged me to read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, a novel about a father and son fighting for survival as they traverse a cold, sunless, ash-covered landscape. What touched me most about the book was the way the father tried to explain, even normalize, this post-apocalyptic world for his son.

In this fictional world, other people pose a threat. They may help you, but they are more likely to kill you. The father helped his son understand this dangerous world by dividing it into good guys and bad guys.

“This is what the good guys do,” he told his son. “They keep trying. They don’t give up.”

Amid the devastation left by Hurricane Sandy, I imagine parents up and down the Eastern Seaboard are doing the same for their children. They have to put a hopeful spin on their new reality and project an optimistic future.

Fortunately, in today’s post-Sandy, nonfiction catastrophe, most people are “the good guys.” Together, they are helping each other navigate their devastated lives.

I’ve watched this video taken in Rockaway Queens over and over again.

I can’t get the images out of my head: streets buried in sand, cars scattered into piles like pick-up sticks. “It’s like a scene from some end-of-the-world movie,” says the film’s narrator. It has been weeks since Sandy raged through this neighborhood, and many people are still without power, heat, or hot water.

This is where we are. We can’t go back. We can only move forward. But the fork in the road that will take us toward McCarthy’s dystopian future is ever closer.

These superstorms are the new normal. And while it will take decades to bring our planet back from the brink, actions we take now can slow and maybe even halt climate change tomorrow.

We have to be like the good guys in McCarthy’s book, who keep trying  and don’t give up.

Fighting for a clean and safe environment is like every other battle we’ve undertaken.  We haven’t made progress in attaining civil rights, equality for women, or gay rights by asking politely. We demand those rights, loudly, consistently — because we are entitled to them.

We must do no less in our fight to stop climate change. Not only are we and future generations entitled to a clean and healthy environment, our lives, and theirs, depend on it.

A slightly different version of this post appeared on Moms Clean Air Force. Click here to act now and join the good guys.

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