mermaidcamp

mermaidcamp

Keeping current in wellness, in and out of the water

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On the Bus or Off the Bus

December 27, 2012 — 2 Comments

Merry Praksters

Merry Praksters

There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all – suspicion. –Demosthenes

How can we cultivate a healthy sense of disrespect and suspicion that is mindful of and careful with  the opinions of others?  We see no mature examples set by politicians.  Religious leaders all teach healthy disrespect for worldly authority.  Some religions teach that all worldly authority is to be shunned because of the wicked nature of it.  The nuns on the bus dissing the Pope showed healthy suspicion of politicians trashing the poor to be elected by the rich. There was a saying that resonated back in the hippie world.  “You are either on the bus or off the bus.”  The phrase came from the book The Electric Acid Kool-Aid Test by Tom Wolfe.  We also talked constantly about revolution, and the end of the empire.  Bob Dylan, The Dead, Angela Davis, Black Panthers, SDS….. it was all very meaningful….and then it faded like morning dew in a folk song.  Perhaps these nuns were hippies who never lost the baby faith.

Double Down to Feed Our Neighbors

December 27, 2012

In Tucson we host a lot of transients, create crime/residual poverty, and our economy has depended on boom and bust construction. The present condition of our social safety net to protect our weakest is critical. Our Community Food Bank is now $400,000 underfunded for the year. The shelves are bare and the need increases daily. Last night on PBS Newshour I listed to philanthropy experts discuss the fiscal cliff fiasco and non profit businesses. Small donors are fewer this year because of both uncertainty and lack of extra funds for giving. The uncertainty is exacerbated by the fact that non profits also receive 30% of all funding from government programs. They know that falling off the cliff will eliminate many non profit agencies by simply removing the government support. I take a very dim view of congress in the steam room while non profits fold.

A glimmer of hope in Tucson: “Hi e’rybody, I’m Jim Click.” A well known cowboy car dealer hero has stepped up with Sandy Peebles to double all the contributions made to the Community Food Bank from now until the end of the year. I usually take mine to a local lawyer’s office for doubling, but she was not offering the matching funds this year, so I am late. I am thrilled to see our wealthy business owners ride up on the white horses in the white hats to do the right thing. I always ask friends and neighbors to support the Food Bank of Southern AZ because they get the most bang for the buck. When you give a dollar to the Food Bank they use their leverage to buy $9 worth of food for those in need in Tucson. Some non profits have heavy staff and administrative costs, but the Food Bank is lean and clean. They recently won a grant to put gardens in the schools. Please follow me to the website and donate now while the need is great and your donation will be doubled. Let’s all help Jim dig a little deeper into his car bucks.

I also ask everyone to help me end fraudulent philanthropy. Criminals take advantage of the public by seeking donations for bogus entities. Please have some scrutiny and some consideration when you donate. The experts on PBS taught me that small donors usually do not write off their gifting on Federal income tax. That was surprising to me. Wealthy people strategically use giving to pay less in taxes. If you do not have an extra million to give, please make sure your donation is going to a legitimate non profit with an ethical goal. The gifts are needed by the legitimate non profits more than ever, and it is important to know what happens to your hard earned donation.

As Above, so Below-the Border

December 24, 2012 — 1 Comment

How irresistible is untaxed profit?  So magnetic that a Border Patrol agent just was stupid enough to load a large shipment of dirt weed into to his migramobile for transport right next to the border recently.  I live in Tucson, in the slipstream of untaxed profit provided by the border. It feels to me like the economy that transpires outside the law, under the table, is much greater than legal business in my state. We are so damn fast, furious, heavily armed, and racist that anything can and does happen.  South of the border, down Mexico way, kingpins of crime created  a much stronger economy than the local legal economy. They now have their own saint which is a sure sign that they are in control. The border itself offers them the risk reward system of illegal commerce that increases their power and wealth. Sure, they have guns (supplied by us), but they only enforce their special jurisdiction with guns. If they had no economy based on smuggling they would have no power in Mexico or the US, thus no need for a saint.

  • The closer to the border, the higher the risk/reward.
  • The closer to the border, the more violent the scene
  • The closer to the border, the higher the pay for crime
  • The closer to the border, the higher the bribes

At the border everything is exponentially magnified and all the cops are criminals, all the sinners saints.  Stakes are high and the dominant criminal precedent has been set in place forever.  Smuggling pays well, and pays law enforcement the highest salaries, one would imagine.  The fence that was built to solve our bizzillion border issues has magnetized them.  The pay is now higher to break laws at the border, and the violence much greater.  Every pendejo who loves lawlessness is attracted to the Arizona/Sonora border. Why?  It is simple.  The pinche-punk criminals flock to both sides of the border because the border itself is pura pendejada.  The migra doesn’t even have a saint. How pathetic is that?

Drugs, Guns, and Risk

December 22, 2012 — 2 Comments

If Mr. McMurphy doesn’t want to take his medication orally, I’m sure we can arrange that he can have it some other way. But I don’t think that he would like it.-Nurse Ratched

The shadow America does not want to face is our mental health system.  Mental health treatment has been a barbaric system of emergency drug administration with no hope for cure.  My parents could afford the best available when they needed help in their last years.  The problem was finding any ethical and effective treatment for them.  Everyone was ready to charge big bucks, but nobody had any real therapy (or even care) for the patient.  They had unlimited access to all drugs, but no access to careful diagnosis or medical ethics.  When I volunteered for the VA my Vet was long-term suicidal, and there was no available help for him either.  I am sure there are some quality programs somewhere, but before going out and spending twice as much money  giving people twice as many drugs, why not evaluate the efficacy of the treatments used now? I am going out on a limb and say our neighborhood system of mental health treatment is damaging to all concerned.  Random pharmaceutical drug use is not healthy, mentally or physically.

In my neighborhood, here in central Tucson, where you can virtually buy drugs in the middle of the street and there is probably  a weapons concierge who will bring a selection of guns to your house for purchase, a 6-year-old was found with a loaded gun in has backpack at school.  His dad was arrested for an old felony charge so the kid who said he did not know how the gun got into his backpack is now probably a foster kid while his father serves time.  This is the reality for the youth here, and they may or may not know how the gun got there, but they know it will not be the last gun they will see.  This deep, sociological, complex problem will be resolved by government programs with an arsenal of pills.  Is that, in any way, believable?

We also have a very large mental health center available to the public and funded by Medicare.  It is close to a public bus stop with a convenience store on the corner.  People from all over the city can come, buy enough alcohol to be over the limit, and be admitted for the night to the mental health clinic.  If they are not at the limit, they simply walk back to the store and buy another pint of liquor. They will be given prescription drugs as a result of the entry to the clinic which they can sell right there in my neighborhood.  The clinic is supposed to make sure that the patients leave the area, but of course there is no way to enforce that rule.  So the patients are released to repeat the cycle.  Spending twice as much money on this will create at least twice the  insanity and grow creepy petty crime around here.  It is a risk to continue to pretend we are treating mental illness or Vet suicide.  Money spent on this denial while asking for more funding is running from the reality that systems profit from status quo, and not from change.  We need fundamental change, comprehensive.  Stopping the madness will involve stopping the flow of drugs as a substitute for therapy.  This is a war on drugs worth fighting and well within our power.

Redefining Wealth

December 17, 2012 — 3 Comments

If you have a mortgage on your home chances are good that a redefinition of your family’s wealth has swept through your reality. To evaluate risk you might have made the assessment that your home was a good investment. You might have accepted that without question and without comparison to liquid investments. You might have purchased your home during the wild and crazy time when the banks were riding high on the fake valuation they gave your home. You might have thought, like the banks did, that there would never be any reckoning for this obvious inflation of the truth.  This harsh reality may feel like a purposeful fraud that was executed on you without your participation.  The question to ask is ” Did I convince the bank I could afford this, or did the bank convince me?”  It does not matter.

What will make a meaningful difference is learning discernment from this kind of tragic error. The Elephant and Donkey Show is now at the point of considering taxing more heavily citizens of the US who make more than a million bucks a year.  I am so all over that if they tax the living daylights out of that group, and actually take their immunity through loophole out of the game. While the world watches America is hosting an epidemic of poverty and lawlessness that make some people believe the anti Christ is the American Dream.  Since Viet Nam the US has been sporting bravado rather than ethics.  Being the greatest country in the world does not involve more spin and PR than real greatness.  It involves adding value and kindness to the world by educating and caring for your own citizens.

One meaningful action we all can take is prayer and meditation, to the best of our training and ability. Palestrina’s Requiem for 5 Voices may be helpful. Pax vobiscum.

Requiem by Palestrina

December 14, 2012 — 3 Comments

Consumption as Culture

December 3, 2012 — 2 Comments

Who is in charge of the decisions you make about consumption? Do your values ever influence what you buy?

Fumigate Congress

December 2, 2012 — 5 Comments

Greek Senate

Greek Senate

I watched an excellent program on the history channel about the use of drugs in history. During the discussion of ancient Greece they showed the Senate (from the same word as senility) being fumigated with herbs before they met to discuss matters. The Greeks hot boxed the lawmakers in the chamber with hallucinogenic herbs to make them cordial.  How have we not thought of this?  How did this practice ever disappear?  These people invented classic.  Why has the CIA not been given a mission to find the fumigation recipe they used?

We know they are all on a number of pharmaceuticals, mind and soul altering drugs with disastrous side effects.  We know that they can not distinguish between health care and wellness.  We know we do not trust them with our money, and they have our money.  I say we dose them, gentle readers, and NOT with their own medicine.  It is time for a major toga party on the hill.

Apathy, the Mother of All Crime

November 15, 2012 — 5 Comments

fledgling hawk at the condo village

We know there is fraud and corruption all around us. We are aware that we pay these highly disputed tax dollars to government employees less than interested in serving the public. We know laws are broken all the time because there is not even a tiny itsy bitsy effort to enforce them. I am not sure why we have so many (but that is another subject) if they are all just recorded somewhere in case lawyers need to use them. The public believes that somehow having cops is having law enforcement, but this highly simplistic notion is every criminal’s best friend. People allow bold and disgusting crime to happen before their very eyes without trying to stop it just because apathy is so strong that they are basically controlled by it. There is no expectation that our surroundings can be kept crime free, but rather a new normal of home security and paranoid, anti social collection of weaponry.  Full disclosure, I live in Arizona, so I am speaking about my own ‘hood.

I live in a condo village that looks like a fake Taos Pueblo in central Tucson.  There are only 30 homes, a pool, a jacuzzi and a small guest parking area.  For the last 10 years the HOA board has had the same two members every year.  They return to office, even though they are not even known to most residents or owners by keeping completely out of touch.  They meet without any interaction with the other homeowners, send a paper newsletter with vague and meaningless report of the meeting in the mail, and  continue to survive in this isolated way because they discovered apathy.  When one of them celebrated the death of her father by stealing $50 from our dues money and making a donation to a hospice in her father’s name, I called to inform her stealing dues money  is both disgusting and illegal.  She hung up on me.  I learned by asking for neighbors to help get them out of office that the most important element of life for them is denial and ignorance about what is happening in the real estate market and in their surroundings.  I reported the theft of the $50 to the attorney general of AZ who responded that they did not handle such cases.  I inquired at the city council office to locate the office that could handle this crime.  The real estate department no longer helps HOAs with crime infested boards, and the fire department is now in some way attached, but there is no resolution other than to get the homeowners to get the stolen money returned. The homeowners’ prime goal was continued apathy, so that was not workable.

They continued in office and started running a charity scam in our public areas.  They solicit food, money , and any kind of junk to their keep the homeless outside campaign.  They do not believe in supporting the existing shelters and non profits that serve the homeless community.  They believe in trashing the environment of their neighborhood, and some other neighborhood with a public park, in order to feed the homeless outside like animals.  They think they are entitled to run a charity scam blocking our driveways and driving down the price of our real estate value because they know that apathy will protect them.  They have run this operation for years in broad daylight begging on the internet for donations.  I have reported the crime to the IRS, AZ revenue, the County Health Dept, the Ward 3 council office, and of course the TPD.  None of these entities cares if we have a charity scam operating in our neighborhood.  Neither do the owners of the homes that have lost more than half of their value while these board members made this special jurisdiction for themselves in our public areas. The neighborhood watch cop tells a story of neighbors watching a house be cleared out by thieves, but never report it because nobody knows their neighbors.  Here, the homeowners sat silently inside their own homes while their very own property value and quality of life  was willfully destroyed and decided that it must be fate.  I own a lot across the street from the HOA property with a rising value, while these home values have sunk like rocks. Foreclosure has come and stayed.

I do not believe in competing unfairly with legitimate non profits that need all the help they can get today.  It is easy to pitch in, volunteer, or donate to many worthy and wholesome programs that assist the homeless, rather than demean them ( and possibly give them food poisoning) in a public park.  I would think that most people would be grossed out by this, but strangers drive through and donate junk without thinking, “What am I doing in a residential condo village blocking the fire lane to do my charity work ?”  But then, those people are just dropping off a few old socks they no longer want.  The homeowners have been willing to loose their socks just to stay apathetic.