Deaf Ears – The Pendulum Swings

The pendulum, that motherfucker whose only purpose in life is to fuck its mother…

In a recent interview with the BBC, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg tried to console us with a calming speech: “We're not experiencing the best of times…A great man once said that the true symbol of the United States is not the bald eagle; it is the pendulum, and when the pendulum swings too far in one direction, it will go back…”

The pendulum, that motherfucker whose only purpose in life is to fuck its mother has swung away from everything we worked so hard to achieve and protect: women’s rights, human rights, health care, the environment, education, the arts - and, oh, a little thing called, freedom!

Justice Ginsburg went on to repeat the quote on the Statue of Liberty, becoming herself a kind of beacon, raising the torch to light our way, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” She talked about how tenuous those words were becoming, words we had always stood steadfastly by, rather like the Statue of Liberty herself.

She talked about the importance of a free press, using Watergate as an example of the kind of bravery we need to uncover the Watergate scandal and Nixon shenanigans. “That story might never have come out if we didn't have the free press that we do,” said Ginsburg. 

But, the 83-year-old jurist said the public's resistance to the new administration - on full display at last month's Women's March - has given her “reason to hope that we will see a better day.” She was right. In the days after the election, nearly 5,000 women from around the country registered to run for public office. Hope.

Back to the pendulum. 

I’ve stopped signing petitions. I stopped for one reason: They will fall on deaf ears. Perhaps not forever. But for right now, I don't see the point.

I’m not saying I was entirely hopeful when I signed petitions in the past. I knew there was a pretty good chance I was kidding myself that anyone on the receiving end of my concern was 1.) Going to give a damn, and 2.) Actually going to do something about it. But, it certainly felt that way – that there was a chance. We heard about petitions that had worked. Even one to a foreign nation that embarrassed the official to whom it was addressed so much, he initiated a change of policy. I’d seen video of volunteers from the National Resources Defense Council and The Organic Consumers Association delivering boxes and boxes of signatures to government officials. I knew one signature represented thousands to the government. These signatures were also presented in court cases and had swayed judges.

There was an excitement, a movement, a thrill of taking part in an effort to change things: to stop human trafficking; to stop abuse of human rights and animal rights; to stop U.S. Navy sonar experiments in the oceans from killing our whales and dolphins; to stop the killing of wolves, bears and buffalo; to stop Monsanto from poisoning our food; to stop fracking and drilling from poisoning our water; to stop the government from lowering organic standards and to stop the EPA from lowering pollution standards.

The EPA. My father was a foreman at a very old family stain company – staining wood, that is – in 1970 when the first EPA rep came to call. Daddy came home shaking his head, “They told me I could throw much more waste into the creek than I was already. I would never throw that much into the creek!” He was so disheartened. And, that was the EPA in its fresh-faced infancy.

I cannot sign petitions any more. I’m quite rattled by that. It’s been a black hole in my online life. The last petition that arrived in my email from my usual trusted orgs would have gone directly to the President.

What a joke! I won’t sign anything that’s going to the White House. What a waste of hope.

My advice to orgs wanting people to sign petitions: Address your petition to lower level officials – not the current President. Address your petitions to Senators, Representatives, Mayors, Governors, Directors, Board Members, any town or city official that must be elected.

In fact, I have conceived a direct mail campaign based on the Cultural Revolution’s dictum, “What if they gave a war and nobody came?” I’ve decided, and anyone may join me in this, the more the merrier, to begin a letter campaign to CEOs of major companies that might be heavy polluters of air and water if the EPA standards are lifted. I intend to appeal to their most human and practical qualities. I’ll request that they maintain their current clean air and water standards regardless of what the current government decides about the EPA. In fact, they may decide to tighten their standards. At the very least and most menial, changing nothing costs nothing.

UPDATE: 3/29/17 CEO of General Electric, Jeff Immelt is "calling on other companies to step up to fill the void that the administration is leaving behind,” as per an internal memo obtained by Politico.  Immelt threw down the climate change gauntlet: “Companies must be resilient and learn to adjust to political volatility all over the world. Companies must have their own ‘foreign policy’ and create technology and solutions that address local needs for our customers and society.” In another article, Colin Taylor of Occupy Democrats wrote: "Immelt went on to point out that innovation and investment into green technology is not only both environmentally prudent and profitable, but also a necessary evolution in today’s rapidly changing global economy."

Just what America needs! A truly benevolent, forward-thinking CEO! Thanks, Mr. Immelt!

 Let's not go back to this!

I will continue to donate to my most favored orgs: the National Resources Defense Council; the Organic Consumers Association; Polaris and The Wilderness Society – all faves because they are effective on both the national and the grass roots levels. I also like their civilized, intelligent methods. I won’t sign petitions with violent language. 

From now on, if I cannot sign and join in a petition, I’ll use my skills to write and speak, whether on this blog, on Facebook, or at poetry readings. My work has always carried my message, my mission, my faith. As the water protectors in North Dakota say, “My weapons are my heart and my words.” I shall write to protect organic standards. I shall write to protect people from slavery of all kinds. I shall write to teach people about achieving health through diet and lifestyle. I shall write to protect the environment. I shall be like Benjamin Franklin. I shall publish pamphlets if I must. I shall be like Supreme Justice Ruth Ginsburg. I shall not retire. I will never stop writing. My head will drop to the keyboard when I die. I shall be like F. Scott Fitzgerald.

I shall be like Tachia Sandoval, the woman in Colorado who used to have a clear, mountain spring running by her house and now, because of fracking, must travel miles several times a week to a water station where she uses her credit card to buy water.

Want to hear the irony? Fracking is no longer profitable. Solar, wind, and waterpower clean and sustainable sources are becoming easier, more efficient and cheaper to access than oil and gas. And, these renewable resources have more potential jobs on all levels for those concerned about jobs. That’s the good news. The bad news: Earthquakes. Many fracking wells have had to close down (good news) because of the powerful earthquakes caused by the holes and the trauma to the earth in the Southwest.

Why do oil companies and countries keep on with pipelines and drilling? There are many more pipelines to fight than the Dakota Access at Standing Rock  – here’s a list.

Oil is a dying industry, yet stubborn in its death throes. The Black Snake is not dead. But, it is dying.

Hope. Meanwhile, we write. And tell, and try to reach people.

To quote this brave woman, Tachia Sandoval, “If I can just make one person wake up, then I’m good.”

©PatriciaGoodwin, 2017

Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die, about Marblehead legends and true crime and its sequel, Dreamwater, about the Salem witch trials and the vicious 11-year-old pirate Ned Low. Holy Days is her third novel, about the sexual, psychological seduction of Gloria Wisher and her subsequent transformation. Her newest book is Telling Time By Apples, And Other Poems About Life On The Remnants of Olde Humphrey Farme, illustrated by the author. 

Will Hillary Save the Bees?

"I believe in America."

The first line of "The Godfather." We hear it in the dark.

I am from a family of Italian immigrants who brought their knowledge and appreciation for good food with them to America. Growing up, we always had wonderful, real, natural food. My mother would not serve anything that, in her words, “came from a factory.” That included boxed breakfast cereals, candy bars, cake mixes, and the like. She was known to forage in open fields for dandelion greens. That is, when what she called “white people,” i.e., rich people, weren’t looking. My uncles, her brothers, would bring us cuts from wheels of cheese and thick papers full of meats from the North End markets of Boston. The egg man dropped off our eggs every week. I was fascinated by the feathers that fell from his clothes. Hot pepper came from my grandmother’s garden, about five feet of space rescued from the concrete backyard, as did arugula and tomatoes. I grew pumpkins when I was old enough to teach myself how, but my mother liked to steal the blooms to sauté with eggs in olive oil and garlic, these we shoved into our eager mouths on crisp Italian bread.

None of us could have, would have, perceived what we are facing now. A blank screen.

"The Godfather" is perhaps the most perfect movie ever made. Brought to you by the people who brought you the Renaissance. Italians. The people who also believe in food, WHO STILL HAVE REAL FOOD in their old country, Italy. The Italians, everyone will agree, brought the most wonderous food to America – I don’t need to tell you, but I will just to make you drool – pizza, spaghetti, lasagna, ravioli, wine, olive oil, bread, cheese, prosciutto, cannoli, rum cake, gelato – are you hungry yet? And, by the way, I’m not talking about fast food. Real Italian food, made from scratch with whole, fresh ingredients from traditional farms. Have you ever eaten a cannoli made without trans fats? The filling made with real Italian cream, the shell made with real Italian butter? 

I doubt it. Unless you went to Italy for it.

In Italy, the Vatican has its own self-sufficient farm, called Castel Gandolfo, 136 acres south of Rome, containing the papal summer residence, formal flower gardens, woods, hay fields, its own working farm and dairy, and its own papal bees. Pope Francis, who will not be summering at Castel, has opened the farm to the public for tours. Visitors may see the papal beekeeper, Marco Tullio Cicero, tending the hives and gathering honey.

 Marco Tullio Cicero, Papal Beekeeper

Since growing up with wondrous fresh foods, I have long admired the self-sufficient farm. I have a picture in my kitchen of a self-sufficient manor home, gardens and farm that I love to look at, and try to emulate as much as possible. It has been a constant vigilance, sometimes requiring that I travel several miles to get good quality food.

Until now. Now, I find it even more difficult to find good food than it was in the ‘60s when the closest thing to a vegan meal you could find in a restaurant was a house salad and a tuna fish sandwich on white bread. For a time, since the cultural revolution of natural foods in the ‘70s, we enjoyed far-reaching vegetarian treats like hummus and tabouli, and we were blessed with fresh vegetables, fish and eggs from relatively clean soil, water and GMO-free farms. Fish used to be fished out of a clean ocean. 

Now, I find that our fish, meat, and eggs are factory-farmed. Farmed salmon are fed GMO corn mash, pigs, chickens and cows are fed GMO soy, most dairy contains BHT, bovine growth hormones, which are illegal in Europe. Farm animals are kept under horrid conditions making factory farms dangerous and toxic, and all of these poisons are in the fish and meats and eggs and are being transferred to our bodies every day. 

Only organics can save the day. But, organics are under attack. Organic standards need to be safeguarded by watch-dog orgs like Organic Consumers Association, Food and Water Watch, Food Democracy Now, Institute for Responsible Technology, and the Cornucopia Institute, among others. The Clinton administration, in 1998, tried to contaminate organic standards by allowing sewage sludge, GMOs and irradiation to be included in organics. Such efforts to eliminate, or, at least, discredit organics are still going on. In 2014, Alexis Baden-Meyer, Political Director of the Organic Consumers Association, was physically pulled out of a National Organic Standards meeting in San Antonio, Texas and arrested for protesting the proposed contamination of organics with synthetic materials.

Think of it, if organics are contaminated, we will be left with only toxic GMOs, toxic factory farms and toxic sick-care to battle the health problems that are already here and will surely only get worse – illnesses like ulcers, ADHD and other behavioral problems, autism, allergies, and cancer. Bill Gates, a GMO advocate, is already trying to buy The Svalbard Seed Vault. Monsanto is buying up organic, heirloom seed companies as part of the conspiracy to undermine organics. Harvard has been working on RoboBees intended to replace the intricate and miraculous bee that God gave us. 

I ask you - How long can the human race survive on astronaut paste?

That’s the nightmare.

Back to the dream, the Pontifical Gardens at Castel Gandolfo, the self-sufficient farm and the papal bees. 

Einstein is reported to having said, “When the bees go extinct, mankind will follow.” Of course, the Internet exploded with denials. “Einstein never said that! We have no evidence that Einstein ever said that.”

I have a feeling the statement is a lot older than Einstein and was probably uttered by Pliny the Elder, or Nostradamus, or Friar Lawrence or Juliette de Baïracli Levy or some other great, ancient gardener, healer and herbalist. Though, why on earth should they ever have imagined a world without bees? Why would Einstein?

Beekeepers, right now, are taking measures to save the bees – and their efforts are working. More bee hives, more beekeepers, more organic methods. In China, hundreds of sincere, hardworking pear growers stood on ladders and used feathers to coax the pollen into the blossoms. Bees were driven in to Maine – Maine has 60% bee loss – to pollinate the blueberry crop. Those bees died. The nightmare keeps creeping in.

"A growing body of evidence has pointed to one class of pesticides in particular, neonicotinoids, as the culprit to the massive bee die-offs. In fact, the European Union banned the three most widely used neonicotinoids in 2o13, but they are still used widely in the U.S."  - EcoWatch

Bees are the tiniest, sweetest little computers. They are probably the most programed species on the planet. Programed by the DNA they take in, programed to perform a certain way. A way that feeds us. Without the bees, we will no longer have onions and garlic (Italians, can you imagine a kitchen without onions and garlic?), fruit, many vegetables, trees, and flowers. Human life will change dramatically, if it is able to continue at all. We can only imagine the ramifications, the ripple, the butterfly effect of such a tragic loss to the natural world.

I have another statement:

“Whoever saves the bees will save mankind.” I said it.

The tiny, buzzing, inconsequential bee. The bee represents so much right now. Like a marvelous superhero, whoever saves the bees will also save America and the planet. That President will save the trees, the waters, the soil, the air and the sky. He – or she - will save the future.

Which Presidential candidate will save the bees? That’s who will have my vote.

It’s well known that the people who were voting for Bernie Sanders were voting for Mother Nature. Alas, Bernie has endorsed and all but passed the torch to Hillary Clinton. But, did Bernie stand a chance? And, if he had become President, would he have had a seven-ton elephant sitting on his chest?

What about Hillary and Trump?

There’s absolutely no reason why the other candidates can’t step up. Except, of course, their beliefs.

The media right now keeps asking the same questions over and over about Hillary’s campaign funds, from which oil and gas drilling and fracking machine did she take money? But the media is asking the wrong question. It’s not about the money. It’s about Hillary’s beliefs. Does Hillary believe in fracking for the future of energy? or for the future of Hillary? She wants to be the first woman President. She wants to be President. Fracking, we’ve discovered, is causing earthquakes. Hillary could blow us up surer than Trump with his nuclear bombs.

Hillary, step out of your hazmat suit and save us! Hillary is the only candidate who has the power. The brain power as well as the strength and the know-how. Will you, Hillary return to your common sense grass roots mission of long ago, shake your head and get your thoughts straight? Right now the common sense is to go along with corporate giants to get what you want. But, think of the future. Think of Chelsea and how she helped Bill change his diet and lifestyle to improve his health! From the most practical aspect, common sense for the future demands an organic approach. You know. You. Know. Deep down, you know.

Dump the frackers! Embrace solar! The sun, Hillary, the sun! Pure reflection! And, what about the currents in San Francisco Bay that could generate enough power to light up the city forever – and then some! The Vivace Tubes, Hillary, can you imagine?

Be the first President to harness clean energy! Tear off that hazmat suit! Go solar! Go organic! You will be our Super-Hero President, our Wonder Woman!

If only she would! But, here’s the problem – if a person still eats badly, that person still thinks badly. Eating regular American food leads you to believe in GMOs, fast food, prepared food-like substances. You’ll think: It can’t be that bad, “they” wouldn’t let us eat it. I remember one person’s comment online: “Do you mean to tell me that our food is making us sick and health care is just raking in the profits on the other end?” Ah, yup.

Trump wouldn’t know real food from fake food. Take cheese, for instance. If he orders cheese at home, it probably won’t be made out of trans-fats or plastics. If he orders a cheeseburger on the campaign trail, he has to eat like the rest of us. Would he know the difference? I doubt it. While driving through Iowa, Trump waved his hand out the window at fields of GMO corn and said, “Look at this! Look at this! Beautiful! This is America!”  After what Trump did in Aberdeen, Scotland – see the film "You’ve Been Trumped" – he destroyed a lovely eco-system for a golf course that no one goes to – there’s a special place in hell for anyone who pulls up trees by their roots and buries them head-first underground.

Trump is hopeless. He’s not smart enough to understand the significance of organics. I can’t imagine Trump actually visualizing the importance of such a tiny thing as a bee. He’d swat a bee. He’d say, very Bush-like, when Bush was asked about the polar bears – “There’s plenty of polar bears!” or Reagan about forest conservation – “A tree's a tree. How many more do you need to look at?” Trump would say, “There’s lots of bees! Tons o’ bees, tons! Look at this great country! Fields and fields of corn!”

But, Hillary is smart enough. She. Is. Smart.

I believe in America. I believe in Nature. I believe in Organics.

Who will stand up for the bees? Who will stand up to defend the bees – in effect, to defend what God gave us? To defend God?

Hillary, it’s up to you. 

Hillary, step out of your hazmat suit! I challenge you as a mother, as future Queen Bee, as The First Woman President of the United States of America. Will you nurture us or throw us to the corporate wolves?

I believe in America.

I want to believe.

UPDATE: The 2012 Swiss documentary "More Than Honey," currently streaming on Netflix,  suggests that, in a kind of bee justice, we are now left with African bees, a stronger fiercer breed than the gentler European bee that is dying out. African bees - not to be confused with "Killer Bees" which are a cross between European and African bees - make honey, can survive on scant resources and are more able to defend themselves against disease. The film's narrator comments, "Are the bees finally striking back, or are they helpless in their hour of need?" Some beekeepers, like Fred Terry of Terry's Apiaries, Oracle, AZ have embraced the African bee as a solution to Colony Collapse Disorder. 

©Patricia Goodwin, 2016

Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die, about Marblehead legends and true crime and its sequel, Dreamwater, about the Salem witch trials and the vicious 11-year-old pirate Ned Low. Holy Days is her third novel, about the sexual, psychological seduction of Gloria Wisher and her subsequent transformation. Patricia also writes about the benefits of Organic Foods and the dangers of GMOs on her blog, see patriciagoodwin.com for Blog Archives and other posts about health.