"... From 2010 to 2012, Burke Harris co-founded the Adverse Childhood Experiences project in the Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood in San Francisco, with colleagues Daniel Lurie from Tipping Point Foundation, Kamala Harris (am's italics), Victor G. Carrion, Lenore Anderson, Lisa Pritzker, and Katie Albright ..." (excerpted from Wiki)
This TED talk came to my attention in connection with an NGO called UOCO that a local friend told me about.
Upon learning that after 48 years of wisdom, the Democratic Party is endorsing nuclear energy as part of its 2020 platform, I was stunned. When I looked out my window early this morning, I saw what looked to me like a mushroom cloud rising from Lake Whatcom. An overreaction to a passing morning mist rising or a reaction I can trust with all my heart and respond to with right action?
Until I read Quicksand: What It Means To Be A Human Being, by Henning Mankell, I thought I was fully aware of the immense dangers of the use of nuclear energy as a source of the kind of power that human beings have come to take for granted to heat and light our homes and run our internets and pretty much everything else we depend on. Little did I know. I am suggesting that book to anyone who might be considering nuclear energy as a solution in today's world or any world imaginable. For anyone else, I am suggesting the book as a text filled with reasons not to pursue nuclear energy as a solution. Nuclear energy is a not a solution to anything.
Ever since reading Joe Biden's biography many years ago, I have had reservations about him. Reading his book then gave me a chill. I never dreamed that he would be a presidential candidate. I am feeling that chill again. It is not a good sign that he is endorsing nuclear energy. It is not a good sign that he distanced himself from Linda Sarsour.
I have no choice but to vote for him. and my heart is torn. Michelle Obama said, "Joe Biden is a profoundly decent man." Decent men can have blind spots. Political parties that are decent can have blind spots. Politics today seems to be a kind of religion with glaring blind spots.
We all have our blind spots, the places where our "hearts are not yet capable of seeing and loving," to borrow words from a poem by Thich Nhat Hanh.
In the interview below, when Henning Mankell talks about Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, I was stunned again because I had to admit to myself how oblivious I was, too, when I heard the story of Robinson Crusoe as a child in the 1950s before the Civil Rights Movement was a conscious part of my life. I knew so little as a middle class white girl from a Protestant family, living in the suburbs of San Francisco. I still know so little. I do my best to keep my heart and mind open and take right action. No matter what happens.
Henning Mankell has a generosity of spirit and, after listening to this interview, I would say that he is a profoundly decent man.
"... death will always come to disturb you ..."
(Henning Mankell)
May Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and "the powers that be" in the Democratic Party think twice about endorsing nuclear energy and may they play a part in bringing the real change that Bernie Sanders and his supporters continue to work for whether elected or not:
How can I be useful, of what service can I be? There is something inside me, what can it be? -- Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)
Welcome to "37TH DREAM (RUMORS OF PEACE)".
The photograph currently at the top of my blog was taken from my porch before sunrise on October 29, 2023.
"OLD GIRL OF THE NORTH COUNTRY" (the earliest name for my blog -- http://oldgirlfromthenorthcountry.blogspot.com
) came to life in early December of 2006 so that I could post a 42-year retrospective of my paintings and drawings and through that action, create a new relationship with the day the man I loved returned from Vietnam in December 1970. For a while (sometime after spring of 2008, which is when he died) my blog was "TALKING 37TH DREAM WITH RAINBOW (RUMORS OF PEACE)". For a number of years, it's been "TALKING 37TH DREAM (RUMORS OF PEACE)." As of April 12, 2017 my blog was titled "37TH DREAM / TALKING 37TH DREAM (RUMORS OF PEACE/LOOKING UP)". Somewhere along the way it became 37TH DREAM (RUMORS OF PEACE).
To begin viewing the retrospective with narrative, scroll down to December 8, 2006, on this page:
I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. -- Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)
All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware. -- Martin Buber (1878-1965)
It is only a little planet, but how beautiful it is.
-- Robinson Jeffers
The true end of a war is the rebirth of life; the right to die peacefully in your own bed. The true end of war is the end of fear; the true end of war is the return of laughter.
-- Alfred Molano
Enjoy every sandwich -- Warren Zevon (1947-2003)
Not in God's wilds will you ever hear the sad moan, "All is vanity." No, we are paid a thousand times for all our toil, and after a single day spent outdoors in their atmosphere of strength and beauty, one could still say, should death come — even without any hope of another life — "Thank you for this most glorious gift!" and pass on.
-- John Muir (1838-1914)
Philip Henslowe: Mr. Fennyman, allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster. Hugh Fennyman: So what do we do? Philip Henslowe: Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well. Hugh Fennyman: How? Philip Henslowe: I don't know. It's a mystery.
