Take Back Your Life!

A friend suggested I watch Enlightened, an HBO series starring Laura Dern. She thought the half hour format and Laura’s character Amy would be right up my activist ally.

I’d never watched an HBO Series and didn’t know what to expect. Regular TV series all seem to be about folks working like dogs or folks solving murders or folks getting horrible surgeries or folks doing forgettable things. I’ve often said to others, “Why do most TV characters work and not do anything else?” Sends a weird message. (more…)

Hello readers,

As the holiday to give thanks approaches, it reminds me how fortunate my life has been and how difficult others’ lives have been. I wonder why does it have to be that way? Why can’t we all live fortunate lives?

I’ve been distressed about the young women and children forced into sex slavery. Big subjects speak to me. I don’t care about some jacket going on sale at The Mall, I care about humans made to do horrible things against their will. It’s a growing, very profitable “industry.”

It took me a good year of reading books, watching movies, reading articles, but I finally had my newspaper column published, The Sex Slave Next Door. Please consider checking it out. Some folks won’t read it because they say it’s too hard to read. (more…)

I got an idea a few weeks ago for the US to create companies where folks are paid to embrace their strengths. Whatever it is that makes them feel alive, that’s their job mission. It’s what I refer to as your Fearless Why.

We subsidize farmers, pharmaceutical companies, oil companies and others. Why not subsidize people’s strengths? Why not take our soul crushing economic model of forcing folks into pre-existing job categories and change it up?

Yes, I know what the skeptics will say. It won’t make a profit. (more…)

Hello all,

Billy Jack post needs to wait another week. After I perused my latest copy of Newsweek and the local paper, I felt compelled to write about the state of the United States.

46.2 million Americans now live in poverty. (15.1%, same as 1993, which I find fascinating. Was that a bad time then? Don’t think so.)

59 million do not have health insurance. (more…)

A little dog wrenched my heart yesterday.

I was driving down the Massachusetts Turnpike lost in highway driving thought when a car about 200 feet in front of me swerved wildly, cut over two lanes and screeched to a halt in the breakdown lane.

Seconds later I knew why. (more…)

Hey friends,

I first became aware of mountain top removal in Appalachia a few years ago. But I didn’t give it much thought. Hey, that’s down in Appalachia. That’s their problem. They can fight for themselves. I’m working hard to save the beauty in my own backyard.

A documentary I watched in December called “Burning the Future: Coal in America,” helped me see that I was wrong.

It’s all my backyard and yours, too.

We’re in this “thing” called life together and the sooner we realize that, the sooner it may dawn on us that Earth is Heaven and we’ve been turning it into hell by not speaking up. (more…)

Hey upbeat friends!

I could look out the window today and say, “ugh, it’s a blizzard. how awful.” But, that’s not what I’m choosing to see.

I see pristine, soft shimmering snow everywhere. It reminds me of childhood when we used to make these igloo homes with various twisting, narrow rooms. My mother dressed me in a one piece, waterproof snowsuit that I used to smooth the inside of my snow home. Now maybe I was just shorter, but as I recall the snow stayed quite deep throughout the winter. I recall the roads being covered with snow rather than plowed down to the pavement. (more…)

Dear critical thinking ones,

A few months back, a friend of mine said, “Land is an endangered species.” Her words stopped me in my suburban tracks. I’d always thought of animals and plants as being endangered (and maybe critical thinking) but land? It only took a moment for me to agree and recall what Mark Twain said, “Buy land, they’re not making it any more.” Here are some stats on land loss in the US.

6,000 acres a day
4 acres per minute
land the size of Seattle every nine days

And so few notice or care. (more…)

Hey questioning ones!

Yesterday, Jimmy and I drove by a field filled with lots of children wearing red and blue shirts doing some kind of organized exercise. Simultaneously, we turned to each other and said, “Mao’s Cultural Revolution?” Something about it left me with a unsettled feeling. The same feeling I get when I bike by a pre-school in a nearby town where the children spend 6+ hours a day “learning/playing” inside a chain-link fence. It feels like captivity has become the new childhood normal, a radical departure from my own. (more…)

Hi rebellious readers,

I spent part of Sunday cleaning out my bureau drawers. For the first time in years, I now have enough room inside for the things I actually use, the stuff that’s usually sprawled on top.

I tossed out buttons for sweaters I no longer own, holiday cards from the last 7 years, airline/hotel info from a trip taken 4 years ago, yellowed shopping receipts, old lipsticks, empty plastic checkbook covers, broken earrings, random pieces of scribble, a 2 foot piece of rope, a ripped swim cap, medals from 20 years ago, broken jewelry, nail files, stretch bands for exercises I’m never going to do, old cat toys and dust.

There’s even more that I’ve heaped together for my first ever yard sale in the spring.

What was I saving this stuff for? What are you saving your stuff for? And why do we have so much stuff to begin with?

For a good chuckle, here’s a link to Comedian George Carlin’s timeless routine about stuff.

CARLIN ON STUFF

Way too much of life is spent managing stuff, protecting stuff, dragging around stuff, hiding stuff, crying over stuff, comparing stuff, worrying about stuff. If we can get out from underneath the weight of all this stuff, maybe we can lead the lives we desire?

How about you? Do you control your stuff or does it control you?

Happy 2010! The year of less stuff.

Muse thx,

Giulietta