Year of Balance - Balance Within or Balance Without?

Man's heart away from nature becomes hard.
~Standing Bear ~

When we speak of balance, we must think of it in our relationship to all things. I think of this quote from Standing Bear as I see acre after acre of woodland torn down. How disconnected we have become from all of creation. In previous articles, I have mentioned our need to find balance within ourselves. I showed how even the simplest of things can have a ripple affect that may have an impact thousands of miles away. I have spoken of how the simple act of turning on a light could be devastating not only to the environment but also to people's health. Part of that is that we have bought into the whole religious teachings that say we hold dominion over all of creation. So everything is seen as property rather than a relation. How much more difficult would it be to tear down hundreds of acres of woods if we though of the oak, maple, pine, and all the shrubs and even the wildlife that lives within as a relation? Because many of us were raised with the teaching that man was put in charge of everything and we could do with it as we will, we have become so detached and unbalanced. So we blindly tear down another five hundred acres or so to put up yet one more half-filled shopping center. The impact of course, being that all those asphalt parking lots then are not absorbing the water from the rains and they get channeled off elsewhere. Who knows what impact that has on the surrounding environment. Let alone all of the wildlife that is now homeless.

Our minds, as well as our bodies, have a need of the out-of-doors. Our spirits too, need simple things, elemental things, the sun and wind and rain, moonlight and starlight, sunrise and mist and mossy forest trails, the perfume of dawn and the smell of fresh-turned earth and the ancient music of wind among trees.
Edwin Way Teale

Have you ever stopped to look at the trees? I mean really look? My sister-in-law was totally enthralled with the bark of the sycamore when we were out in Arizona. How many can describe the texture of the bark of the pine, the oak, the maple? Can you identify a tree by its leaves? How about the night sky? If you live in an area that you are fortunate enough not to have street lights, have you ever gone out and just looked up in the sky? Can you pick out Ursa Major(Big Dipper), Ursa Minor(Little Dipper), or even Orion? Okay, quick, no peaking, what is the phase of the moon? Have you ever smelled the musty, piny smell of pine needs in an old growth forest? Have you ever smelled the scent from a sassafras leave?

Many of us are so disconnected from all of creation that we actually feel uncomfortable out in the woods. There are some who would not venture out of the city if they didn't have to. Many of them wouldn't even bat an eyelash if they were told that someone wanted to tear down over five hundred acres to put up the world's largest casino. Heck, they might just ask when it was expected to be done. Not a thought to all of those relations that would be destroyed in order to give them a place to go and lose their money. Not a thought to the hundreds, if not thousands, of animals that are displaced or outright killed so they can have a place to lose their money.

To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature....The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

I grew up in the woods. I had Fort Barton and the Holt conservation trails as my backyard. The Smiths down the road also kept hundreds of acres of woods as a conservancy. Unfortunately, the Smiths passed and their son sold out to a developer who immediately put up no trespassing signs and forbade anyone to go to the waterfalls anymore. Soon a road was cleared and houses went up in the woods that the Smiths cherished. I loved those woods. There was a glade up near the waterfalls where I would go and just lay in the grass with the filtered sun coming through the trees. The rabbits and squirrels would come by and I would talk to them. I don't know if they understood a word I said, but it was therapeutic for me. I tried to bring that to my kids and took them often to the reservation down in Fall River. We even went out one Earth Day weekend and cleaned up the side of Bell Rock Road from Copicut down to the entrance to the reservation. I remember after we moved out to North Attleboro, I found High Rock in Wrentham and would take the kids there. We were out walking one day and my daughter yells, "Hey Dad, look at this." I thought she might have found a rabbit, a flower, nope, a can and a candy wrapper. She picked it up and we took it back to the entrance to throw in the can. Man's disconnection from nature was evident in the uncaring throwing of their trash.

Of course litter isn't just confined to the woods. Have you ever stopped for a light with an island between the lanes? Collected against the curb are mounds of cigarette butts. Aren't cars equipped with ash trays? Why do they have to throw them out the window? Have you ever just tossed something out the window when driving or on the ground when walking? Maybe it's time to reverse the trend? What are you doing this Earth Day. It is the 40th anniversary this year.
http://www.earthday.net/earthday2010
Can you get friends together and maybe clean the local park? Get your neighbors together and do a clean sweep of the street?

To me, nature is sacred; trees are my temples and forests are my cathedrals. - Mikhail Gorbachev

The woods have always been sacred to me. Some of my most powerful prayers have been in the woods. There is nothing like going and sitting on a ledge and talking to God, then the most important part, being silent. Many of us forget that important part of prayer, being silent. I remember a few years back, I had gone to the woods to pray for direction. I was going to stay out in the woods for a few days alone. Let me tell you, that first night, as the last biker left the woods, the last family hiked out, and the woods fell silent and the sun was setting, shivers go down your spine. At first you are sitting there asking yourself, what am I doing here? You start to hear the nocturnal animals starting to rustle. Fear starts to take hold. You want to run while you still had enough light and get the heck out of there. You were sitting there with no campfire and the woods getting darker and darker. Then I started to pray. I asked for the courage to make it through the night. I asked to have the fear removed so I would not lose sight of why I was there. Then I allowed myself to become quiet. All of a sudden, I felt a lightness come over me and the fear just drained out of me. I became amazed at how much I could see in the woods at night even though it was the night of a new moon. Oh, yeah, did I leave that out? The rest of the night was fairly decent, though by morning, the cool dampness of the woods had gotten into my arthritis and it was becoming inflamed and causing some numbness. Yet, though I had to leave the woods the next morning, I felt I had come to know a close friend and also learned the power of prayer.

There is a road in the hearts of all of us, hidden and seldom traveled,
which leads to an unkown, secret place.
The old people came literally to love the soil,
and they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of
being close to a mothering power.
Their teepees were built upon the earth
and their altars were made of earth.
The soul was soothing, strengthening, cleansing and healing.
That is why the old Indian still sits upon the earth instead of
propping himself up and away from its life giving forces.
For him, to sit or lie upon the ground is to be able to think more deeply
and to feel more keenly. He can see more clearly into the mysteries of
life and come closer in kinship to other lives about him.
~ Chief Luther Standing Bear ~

In my series on reconnecting I had talked about the many ways we can reconnect. I talked about sitting with the earthworm for a bit. Sitting under a tree. Laying with the stone people. Many would think this nuts, but we have become so disconnected, it may just be the best way. I love sitting on a ledge overlooking all of creation, watching the hawks dance, seeing the deer stopping to take a drink in the pond below. Part of the reason for our imbalance in our lives, is our disconnection. So I offer a challenge. Go out and sit in the woods, just be quiet and observe all that is around you. Go out and identify four different trees. Feel their bark, what is the texture, smooth, rough? What do the leaves look like? Does it have a scent like the pine, cedar or sassafras? What do you really know about these trees? Look up something about them online and learn a little about them. Take a look at some of the rocks around. What is their texture? Are they smooth? Round? Pockmarked? Are they grey? Black? White? Mottled? What do you think its story is? Yes, it has one. Here in Massachusetts we have some boulders that are almost as large as a house. They appear to be comprised of smaller rocks. How did they get there? Yes, we have been told that the huge sheets of ice from the ice age deposited them there, but where did they come from? Lastly, what kind of animals are in your area? What do they live on? Where do they live? Is their habitat threatened? If so, what can we do to help?

The point is that we need to reengage ourselves with our surroundings. We need to start seeing the trees and animals, not as objects whose existence is subject to our whims, but as relations that we must care for. So go out there and sit on the ground. Feel the tree, ask the stone where it came from.

My heart to your heart, one heart, one spirit.

Year of Balance - Negative Waves

"Always with the negative waves Moriarty, always with the negative waves" - Oddball from Kelley's Heroes.

Before I go on, I loved this character. I like odd characters in movies. I won Best Actor for Newport County two years running when I was a teen. I played quirky characters like Renfield in Seven Wives for Count Dracula and Ivan - Russian Count and Chauffeur who in reality was John Smith, Hollywood dress designer. I was always playing characters of some sort. When I was off in the service my mother called me twice, once to tell me to turn on the TV quick that I was on there. She was rolling, Mork and Mindy was on. The other time was when the A-Team premiered and she saw Murdoch. I kind of liked Murdoch myself.
Why do I share that? Well, that was how I was. back then. I was that character you saw in Mork and Mindy. I was Murdoch without the explosions, gun fights, and I don't fly. Other than that, I was kind of like those two characters only in real life. Over time, life just sort of beat me up and I lost that until I finally cracked under it all and had a breakdown. All of that negativity in my life just seemed to get absorbed. Stop with the negative waves all ready, Moriarty. But the waves didn't stop. In fact, It seems I just kept taking on more and more. Eventually, I could only see the negative and I finally broke down. It took five years of working with a good psychologist to get my head right. One of the things that came out of it was finding out what my spirituality was, or rather what it was not.
So began the journey that I continue today. I wasn't destined to be a priest, despite many people believing I should have been. That was their journey for me, but not mine. So off I began on an amazing journey of discovery. It would take many years before I would start to overcome all the "negative waves" or at least get them down to ripples. I still have some setbacks, but at least moving more towards positive waves. Hopefully, with the way I feel these days it can turn into a positive tsunami.
Now as I started my journey, I studied the Druids and other European spiritual paths. I forget which tradition, I think Norse, but they spoke of the web of life. Three sisters spun the web of life and what you put into it you got back thrice. So if you put out negative you got it back, thrice. Which explains why I spiraled down faster and faster. Though, as I started to learn more and more, I started to put some positive energy back into the web. It got to the point where I started to get brief moments of that old "Murdoch" back. As I continued down my path, it took a turn from simply a spiritual quest to learning indigenous healing ways from the European shamans, to the Aztec curandero, to the Inka Laika, Native American medicine, mountain herbal medicine, and even the healing drums of the Manianka of Mali. As I was learning all of this, I stumbled on my first book by Greg Braden and the blending of science and spirituality. After I read Lynn McTaggart's The Field, I found that our own CIA had programs that were utilizing psychic tools like remote viewing to spy on the Russians. All through my life, I was told all of this was nonsense, but here I read that our own government believed in it enough that they actually had programs to make use of it.
So all that I had learned so far on my journey that my logical, socialized mind had trouble wrapping itself around, now seemed plausible. Despite a very negative year last year, this year has found itself to be filled with hope and I am back reading and learning, and yes, even writing. Ripples. I have written about ripples in my last couple of blogs. We have an affect on others, locally, and even far away. So hopefully, all that I learn and give back, will inspire others to learn.
Leaders don't force people to follow—they invite them on a journey. - Charles S. Lauer
It has been a great journey so far. I feel a positive flow of energy coming this year. I am putting out that thought. So if the three sisters are listening, I could really use that back three fold. LOL.
So I am inviting you on a journey. If you are interested and want to learn, I have many book recommendations. There are also a couple of great movies if you are interested, What the Bleep Do We Know, that talks about Quantum Physics, and Elegant Universe that looks at String Theory.
Now before I sign off this time, I want to refer to the latter movie. Elegant Universe. In it, string theorist postulate that they believe there are close to fifteen dimensions. Recently, I have been hearing a lot of "chatter" about this new world that is coming. This world being referred to in Mayan Calendar talk, Hopi, Anishinabe, and other prophesies. They say that in the coming few years leading up to 2012 and the end of the Mayan calendar we will be seeing a shift of awareness and as we do, we will come to be aware of the fifth dimension. Ironic that, eh? It was the Fifth Dimension who sang, Age of Aguarius. An age that is also spoken of in astronomy circles. While Hollywood is latching on to the negative view of 2012, we must not get drawn in to that. This should not be a time of fearmongering, but rather a time of hope.
If the many prophesies and indigenous beliefs hold true, this should not be a time of foreboding, but a time of hope. Many of these prophesies speak not of the demise of man, but of a transition to a new world, one that brings harmony, balance, and abundance for all peoples.
So let's not buy into the Hollywood version of things. Do your own research. Learn, understand, and share. Most of all, get away from the negative waves, and ride a positive way. Because like the Beach Boys sang, "Catch a wave and your sitting on top of the world".
My heart to your heart, one heart, one spirit.

Year of Balance - Expanding Circles

"You have noticed that everything as Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the Power of the World always works in circles, and everything tries to be round..... The Sky is round, and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls. Birds make their nest in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours....

Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves." - Black Elk

In my last writing, I showed how we are connected. Our moods and actions can affect those around. Yet, it isn't just in that way that we affect our surroundings and our world. Think back to that image of the pond. When the pebble hits the water, do the ripples just stop after a couple of waves? Or do they continue to ripple out diminishing the further they get away, but still there? That is much the way we have an affect on our world.
Think about the simple act of turning on a light. We think nothing of it because we just flick a switch and voila, light. What kind of wave does that cause? We wanted that artificial light and we got it without thinking what went into getting it.
Well, all those cables going along the road, got that electricity from a power source, a generation station, and delivered it to that bulb. Of course, those power generation stations have to have power to create the electricity that goes down those power lines to the switch that you click to light the bulb. While wind farms are slowly taking hold, and there is work being done to see about generating solar power, the primary sources are coal fired, hydroelectric, and nuclear. There may be others, but let's look at those three.
First coal, let's forget the marketing garbage about clean coal, there is nothing clean about coal. It is dirty and nasty from the mining of it, to what goes into the sky when it is burned. In some areas, they are blowing the top off of mountains to get at the coal. If it rains, the runoff is supposed to be caught in dammed areas that are supposed to keep the heavy metals like cyanide from running into the local rivers and streams. Sometimes those dams break, leeching the heavy metals and other contaminants not only into the local rivers and streams but also into the ground water. Animals drink it and die, humans get sick. It's easy to sit back and say, well, that is in another state, it doesn't affect me. Yet, the simple act of turning on a light created the need to mine that coal. Ripples.
Hydroelectric is clean, but the impact on the local areas is tremendous. It requires building a dam on a river so that the water backs up and floods the areas behind it. I think it was in Washington state that the local tribe, Klamath, I think it was, actually fought to have a dam taken down because it was destroying the salmon fishing. The salmon could no longer get upstream to breed so their numbers were diminishing. The dam was interfering with the local ecological cycles. So while it didn't add to the CO2 in the area, it destroyed hundreds of acres of land and killed off the fish population and the livelihood of the Klamath. Ripples.
One of the most nefarious of all is nuclear. Oh, it is the sweetheart of many, even some environmentalists, but its affect is long lasting. A lot of the uranium is mined from Native American lands. Many of these mines that were closed were left uncapped. The tailings from the mines leeching into the streams, the aquifers, and the ground contaminating everything. I had read an article that the Cheyenne River itself was so contaminated they had to put up signs telling people not to swim in it or use the water to water their gardens. There was another story coming out of the Southwest that told of new hogans that had been built for the Navajo only to find out that the gravel that they used for the cement had been contaminated. The people were living in these new hogans happy to have a new roof over their head, but getting sicker by the day. It was finally traced to the cement floors and the gravel that was used. The mines were unmarked and uncapped. The rainwater had caused runoff to contaminate the surrounding area. With energy the way it is, there is talk of reopening a lot of these mines. The affect on people is horrible, never mind the wildlife. Speaking of which, now think a little further down the chain of things and a rabbit drinks from the runoff and later is caught by a hunter and brought home to feed his family. Ripples. In the case of nuclear, it doesn't stop there. What the heck do you do with it when you are done. It is still radioactive. So they are going to truck it all out to Nevada to Yucca Mountain to bury it there, where an earthquake or volcano can bring it right back up, or down into the aquifers. After all the area was created by a caldera, a cauldron-like volcano. There is a caldera in Yellowstone that could get set off if they aren't careful with the oil and gas mining. Ripples.
I am just pointing this out to show that the simple act of turning on a light and following the connections, shows how we are all related. We are all connected. This isn't even going into the quantum physics aspects that prove that we are through science. This is just showing that turning on that light bulb, killed off salmon, or animals, or made people sick. We don't think about it. Maybe the furthest thought we give is our electric bill going up if we leave the light on. It doesn't end there though. Ripples. All life is a circle and we are all connected, man, animals, birds, trees, rocks, rivers, and even the ocean. From some things I have read, that the earth can even affect the sun, though we know the sun can affect us.
We really need to start looking at how we are related. How our actions or inaction has a ripple affect that can touch people half way around the world. The example here is the simple act of turning on a light. Yet, how many other things have an affect? How much food do we waste that causes big agricompanies to have to produce more to keep up with demand and in turn they push the little farmer out and then have to turn to using chemicals to fertilize the land adding contaminates into the local environment and into the foods we eat. You do wash your fruits and veggies I hope. We are all related. The simplest of things we do can have a ripple affect hundreds to thousands of miles away.
We want cheaper prices so companies oblige by laying off your neighbors and outsourcing to cheap labor in China and other countries. So more people are out of work, the economy tanks. Ripples.
I could go on and on with example after example of how we can have affects locally to nationally to internationally. Its up to us. If we stop to think, at least once a day, about the thing we are doing and what affect it might have, maybe we can change our mindset and not take things so much for granted. Maybe just shutting off that light when we leave the room will diminish the need for blowing the top off another mountain or poisoning the ground with radioactive waste.
Maybe we can take it one step further. Maybe we can start finding ways to help bring about changes. Can you afford to put some solar panels on your roof and generate your own electricity or at least hot water? Can you put up a wind turbine? Can you push your legislators to find "green" energy resources and really push for them and not just rename dirty energy like coal and call it "clean coal", what a crock.
My friend Tanja Martin posted a quote on Facebook:

The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and hasten the resurrection of the dead.-William Lloyd Garrison

Now we don't want the statues to have to come to life. We have become so comfortable in our lives and so detached from the hunter gather days when we knew the source of our food. Maybe if we knew just what impact our "conveniences" have on others, we might relearn to live locally and be more environmentally conscious. It isn't just a matter of "New Age" green thinking. It is the way indigenous peoples have lived for centuries. Take only what you need and give thanks.
Please think about solar or wind power if it is feasible for you? Seek out the local farmers for your produce. I mean, think about how far that piece of fruit or vegetable from California or Guatemala had to travel. The fuel, the labor. There are things we can do. I plan on trying to find them, will you?
My heart to your heart, one heart, one spirit.

Wisdom From a Fortune Cookie - Stuff Happens

"Stuff happens. It is your response that counts."

Things happen to us everyday. Some things are great, but for some reason we hold back our excitement so that others think we didn't really care or it didn't matter to us. Other times, bad things happen and we go right away to the deepest, darkest place we can imagine.
I am guilty of this at times, as I am sure many of you are. When those good things happen, what holds us back from rejoicing in the moment? Are we afraid to be happy? Are we conditioned to believe that we are unworthy of happiness?
How many of us fall into that martyrdom feeling when the bad things happen? What, am I the only one with their hand raised? I tell you, the past year has been rough. long hours at the job, car died and had to get a new one when I couldn't afford it, and other minor setbacks, that became major because of my perception. That is the key, perception.
It is easy to fall into the trap when negative things happen on a somewhat frequent basis. When they do, even the smallest of things can get blown out of proportion. Before we know it, we find ourselves trapped in a paradigm of martyrdom. Once in it, even the good things are treated like we are waiting for the shoe to drop. We can't enjoy the good moments in our lives because we keep looking for that bad thing to come.
Well, it is time for us to change our perspective. Or rather, start putting things in their proper perspective. We need to change the paradigm of "Whoa is me". Only in doing this will we get to the point of life is great! So, how do we go about doing that?
Well, the first thing is to start taking stock of these things. One of the biggest measures when something goes wrong? Is anyone going to die? I think for most of us, the answer is no. Okay, so it isn't life critical, so can't be all that bad. Next measure is to look back over our life to similar situations and how they played out? Yes, we had a set back, but what happened next? Did we overcome it and move on? Hey, you are here and so am I, so I guess the answer is yes.
I look back over my life and I can see so many times where my life just plain sucked. Yet, here I sit in a nice modest home with a large yard so I can have my gardens and even room for an orchard. We fenced it all in so the dogs can just go out and run around on almost an acre of land. Yes, my car died, but now I have one that gets me almost thirty miles per gallon, so between the bike and the car, I am saving gas. We managed to get a pellet stove before the money runs out, so we can save on electricity. I will have my gardens again. I do miss growing things.
So I have a lot of positive going on in my life, but I have been holding back my excitement, because I am waiting for the other shoe to drop. The thing is, that shoe may never be there and it might even be just a sandal. So I have wasted all this time not enjoying what I have.
So it is time to stop letting stuff happen and always responding negatively. Rather than have things take control of me, I will let things happen and wash over me and on by. Life is like a river. We can either fight the flow, or go with it. It is time to once again embrace life and put things back in their proper perspective. How will you respond?
My heart to your heart, one heart, one spirit.

The Demise of National Holidays

Got paged early in the morning for a problem at work. I logged in to clear things up and while waiting for a job to finish, I figured I would check FaceBook. Surprise, surprise, Kohl's had posted about their three day sale. They were opening up on New Years Day. Yeah, some surprise given that stores seem to open every day now except for Christmas and Kmart tried to do that a few years back. Well, I just had to respond and I wrote on Kohl's page that they should be closed and allow families to be together. Boy, did that ignite a firestorm. There were many comments, some as sedate as "No one is forcing those employees to work at Kohls. I'll bet they're glad to have a job" and "Edward, you need to act a little bit more adult. In retail, nobody is FORCED to work unless they are management. Usually when management is forced to work, it is because their employees ELECTED NOT to work." and "Seriously people, if retail stores didn't stay open then they wouldn't be able to pay thier employees. If they didn't pay thier employees, then the employees would be out of a job. Therefore bringing the economy back down... Happy New Year to you all too... wow".
Then there were the more serious ones "If you don't like corporate greed, then you don't like capitalism, and then you must hate "FREE" Enterprise. If that's the case then you fit right in with Obama's Socialist agenda. Stalin and Lenin are smiling somewhere right now." and the personal attack, "Get a clue Edward White. How old are you, 12? Do you know how many stores -- even NON-CORPORATE ONES that are open on New Years' Eve. To make you look even more foolish, you're a "fan" of a corporate retailer. Yeah, you're starting off the year looking like a fool."

Okay, the last two are some serious points. If you don't like stores being open on holidays then you are a commie pinko and twelve year old. Hmmm. Let's look first at the holidays. There are seven National Holidays, President's Day, Memorial Day, 4th of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years. I know New Years is the beginning of the order, but we usually clump it with Christmas because they are within a week. Out of these seven, the only one we don't open stores on is Christmas. Though I remember a big stink a number of years back when Kmart announced they were going to open Christmas day. They quickly backed down from that.
Seven days out of 365. Of course, if you live in Massachusetts and work for the government then you get Patriots Day too, though no one else does. Interesting how government employees get all the holidays off while many of the rest of us have to work. Our taxes paying their salary so they can get the day off. But that is another issue.

Okay, so now we know the holidays and I would like to respond to some of the points raised by the people who responded to my original post.

First off, the huge jump to me being a socialist or communist because I think that we ALL should have National Holidays off. What kind of sense does that make? How am I anti-capitalism for simply stating that a holiday is a holiday and should be a day off for all people. Okay, unfortunately, health care, fire and police, aka emergency services would have to be staffed, but why, oh why, do retail stores have to be open? The idea that if they aren't they can't pay their employees, they economy will suffer, etc, is pure garbage. Many stores did just fine back in the days of "blue laws" and the economy was robust. Stores were closed not only on holidays but also on Sundays. Families could get together on holidays and celebrate together. If taking seven days off a year and just closing everything down is going to bring down the economy, then we are in more dire trouble than has ever been reported. It would also stand as proof that capitalism doesn't work.

Now, let's look at the remark that people aren't forced to work. I beg to differ. Many know that it is implied that if you do not work, then your hours will get cut, or they will find a reason to let you go. Granted some do work, because they need the money and put aside family in order to get money to survive. The thing is, why do they have to be there in the first place. Well, like this person said, "alot of us prefer to shop new year's day rather than sit and watch football all day. my daughters and i usually go shopping while the guys watch the games. guess you could call it family tradition lol." So basically, people are bored and have nothing better to do, so rather than get together with family and friends they want to go shopping. So they demand the stores be open, so stores push to be open and then compel their workers to come in.

So all those people who did get the day off, decide that they want to spend it shopping so that others can't have the day off. The real question is why? Why do we feel the need to go shopping all the time? This year, New Years fell on a Friday and many of the people who responded to my remarks said something akin to what this last quote said. Many of them were going shopping because they had nothing better to do. I had asked, tomorrow is Saturday, you can't wait one day? Nope, sales are on, got to go! Have we bought so deeply into the material world that we are now subjugated by it and are compelled to shop every single day? I would like all those people who felt they just had to shop, to stop when you are in that check-out line and look that person in the face. That is another human being that YOU are forcing to work because you are addicted to material goods and can't go one day without shopping.

So have we become more like India with a class system with those who work retail as the lowest class? All these other people get the day off and because they are bored, they force all the people who work retail to leave their families, some of whom would have liked to spend time with their families.

Seven days folks. Seven days out of 365. Are you really that addicted to shopping? You can't take seven days off so that people in retail can actually spend the holidays with their families? As to the person above who said that they didn't want to sit and watch a football game so all the women go shopping, hey, you tell me you don't have any imagination to think of anything else to do? How about playing a game? Playing cards? Doing arts and crafts? Gardening in the summer? Volunteering somewhere so that someone who does want to be with their family can.

As far as me being a commie socialist pinko, well if that equates to me putting my family before a corporate entity, then yup, guilty as charged. If stores are going to go under because of being closed for these seven days, then maybe those corporate execs could kick in some of their big paychecks and bonuses to save the economy. When we are reading of corporate handouts in order to save the companies and at the same time they continue to pay out their big bonuses, because hey, they were contracted to do so, I think closing retail stores for seven days a year is not the problem with the economy.

I make a motion that a law be passed that returns holidays to the people. Close all retail outlets on National holidays, those seven days. If that cannot be done, then do away with holidays all together and make all those people who had the day off and chose to force others to work, have to go in to work too. Maybe if we did that, and people started losing their holidays, it would mean more to them.

Just had to get that off my chest.
My heart to your heart, one heart, one spirit.