Being With Remarkable Beings-pic

Being With Remarkable Beings-pic
Labyrinth, Ashland, Oregon

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Being With Remarkable Beings

NONFICTION                                   



100 Profiles on luminaries of consciousness, healing, inner transformation, enlightenment & the New Spirituality

Voices of the global & the local
 in Ashland & the Rogue Valley, Oregon

John E. Darling

Introduction


  People need to tell their stories - and should be allowed to, with minimal tweaking and spin by the journalist who is reporting them.  That’s what these articles try to do.  I love telling people’s stories and am thankful there’s now an internet to hold them for all time, rather than having them stuck on microfilm in a library for the curious few. 

   These articles, published in the 21st century and late 1990s, are about people who have something conscious to say -- and are making it real through action in their lives.  They are changing the world.  I almost said “trying” to change the world.  No, they’re doing it -- and in the only way it gets done, through having a vision, taking real steps with it and pulling others into it, so it catches on and becomes a community -- and sometimes a global -- effort.

   I know that getting a story in “the paper” (and now the internet) helps a lot and I’ve loved helping all these people with a vision.  Some have met with great success.  Some have moved onto other things, using what they’ve learned.  Some have passed away but, of course, left their mark and influenced people.  The main thing is that they cared.  They did the dance.  They wrote, researched, learned, loved, cared.  The went to the door of life and knocked.  If there was no answer, they just opened the door and walked through it, out into the playing field where life is lived out. 

   You or I may not agree with some of what is said here, but it was said and when you put these scores of stories, all emanating from our beloved Rogue Valley, Oregon, up there on the bulletin board of life, they form a beautiful picture, one that has immense heart and makes beautiful sense.  It’s not just a picture of life but also of the great things that happen in a lovely valley like ours, one that attracts so many of the great hearts and minds from our society, each singing his/her own song -- and darned if they don’t harmonize into a great choir.

   I’ve spent 44 years in Oregon journalism telling such stories and, believe me, it would be hard to find a better life.  They pay me for this?  I’d pay them to do it if I had the money.  If I were told I had a couple months to live, you know how I’d spend it?  Not on some island paradise drinking mai tais and having lovely maids drop grapes in my mouth.  No, I’d do this: journalism.  I already am on vacation -- and this Rogue Valley and its people is the finest paradise I could ever ask for.

John Darling
Ashland, Oregon
August 2011










Jean Houston: Creating Social Artistry


A new generation of “social artists” is needed to engage and lead our rapidly evolving world -- and Ashland philosopher-author Jean Houston is training them.

   Houston, author of 26 books and a teacher of consciousness-raising seminars around the world, has for a decade, led her Social Artistry Summer Leadreship Institute at Southern Oregon University, training people to carry out projects in the US for health care reform, community development through the arts, environmental education, Native American housing, prison education and literacy to overcome poverty.

   This August, she leads her training on a cruise to Alaska, with a fund-raising benefit brunch, lecture and art auction in Ashland.

   Houston, an Ashland resident for 13 years, has located her nonprofit Jean Houston Foundation in Ashland -- and the event will be an attempt to reach out more deeply to the Ashland community, which, says the foundation executive director Peggy Dean, has a lot of retired people of accomplishment and means who want to do social artistry.

   Working with the United Nations Development Program, her teams have been training social artistry leaders abroad - in Albania, Kenya, Nepal, the Philippines and the Caribbean to organize basic life functions, such as sanitation, food supply, small business support, dairies and literacy, said Dean.

   “It’s giving people hope and purpose with hands-on skills, using a sensory-rich strategy,” said Dean, noting that social artistry incorporates local myth, storytelling, dance, music, theater and folkways, rather than coming in and imposing Western-style planning and organization.

   “As the old structures fail, it becomes them-and-us but this brings about the ‘we’ again,” said Houston, noting that social artistry works to counter the hopelessness and immobility resulting “when 1 percent of the population has more income than the lower 90 percent.”

   Houston adds, “Now, more change is happening faster, old traditions are collapsing and the economy is not going to get better. We’ve lived through the good times, having good incomes, comfort, scientific advances and good education. Now, instead of good times, we’re having what I call ‘great times,’ meaning that what’s expected is the unexpected at every level.”

   To cope with such levels of change, instability and complexity requires people skilled in social artistry, Houston says, adding that at her trainings people often come in teams or form into networks, then leave to conduct specific projects

   “We’re always looking for the emerging story (in the local culture), then you have your reason for being and you create that communal bond that allows the community to go forward,” says Houston.

   Gloria Rossi Menendez, owner of Blue (the Ashland restaurant) and “creative working partner” with Houston, says, “We lift our local lives into the much bigger story and it carries and lifts you, creating a web that does not have a weaver.”

   Houston adds, “It’s an artistry that focuses intentionality and brings out so many inner skills. This is important because we’re not prepared for this time. The average person now has 100 times the experience of people a century ago...the level of our development has to keep pace with our crises -- in the economy, ecology, terrorism...”

    Houston, 74, works to integrate skills and wisdom from both genders and all cultures and quips, “Too many white males I meet are prepared for the challenges of 1926.”

   Dean works on social artistry with Microsoft Corporation and says she teaches business people to move beyond the old models of management.
  
   The social artistry model of leadership, says Dean, includes expanded intellectual capacity, systems thinking, strategic problem-solving, partnership building, “gender mainstreaming,” human rights, personal imagination, initiative and appreciation for the local culture and wisdom, along with lots of “rhythmic response, jokes and laughter.”

   The difference in social artistry, notes Houston, is that it’s sensory, physical, psychological, mythic, symbolic, spiritual and integral -- all qualities developing beyond the old business and management styles.

   Often employing mind-stretching phrases and concepts, Houston sums up the purpose of social artistry by saying, “Indigenous peoples know we have access to a wide spectrum of personas, which we can train people to take on. We’re not just these bags of skin we drag around.”

   Houston says she wants to step up her use of skilled area residents because “Ashland is ancient Athens without the slaves. We have music, arts, the best theater in the country, tremendous healing centers, more mind-body workers per square foot than anywhere in the world. It’s a town vigorously involved with itself.”

   Houston’s work has roots in ancient Greek mythology and values, as do her Mystery Schools, taught annually in Oregon and New York state.

   The Alaskan cruise training, called “Navigating the Wilderness starts with a three-day training in Seattle. Information is at www.jeanhoustonfoundation.org. For tickets for the Ashland auction, call the Social Artistry Foundation, 541-482-4240 or the Jean Houston office, 541-482-1200.  ~









Byron Katie: Loving What Is

   Vastly more suffering is caused by the thoughts we have about people and events around us than is actually caused by those people and events.

   That’s why it’s good to try and separate the two, realizing we have control over one (our thoughts) but not over the other (external people and events).

   We talk about “God” all the time, pray to him/her/it and love him/her/it and we define God as “everything,” therefore reality is God.  By definition, then, we love reality. 

   But, we want all kinds of things about reality to change, in order for us to be happy or even satisfied.  But they don’t change.  So, we’re justified in being unhappy.  We are loving reality conditionally and rejecting big chunks of it.

   This is the thread of consciousness-raising played out by Byron Katie one recent winter night at Southern Oregon University before a thousand or so people, many of whom clearly loved her and told her so and many who clearly struggled with the message.

   Some said it was a simple approach and they’d heard it all before many times, which is true, but Katie is relentless in getting across this message, which she learned the hard way, in her dark night of the soul, in her thirties in Southern California, over a decade of depression and suicidal obsession caused, she says, by believing things should be different than they are.

   Then one day, Katie “woke up to reality” realizing it was her thoughts, not external reality that was making her miserable.  A favorite thought, in her own pre-awakened mind and in those who volunteered to bare all before the audience in sessions with her, is “my partner/parent/children don’t appreciate or love me enough.”

   In a self-improvement world of people encouraging empathy and heartfulness, Katie moves as a bracing blast of reality, asking the crowd to fill out a “Judge Your Neighbor Worksheet, to wit:

--Who angers, frustrates or confuses you and why?
--How do you want them to change?
--What is it they should or shouldn’t do, be, think or feel? What advice could you offer?
--What do they need to do in order for you to be happy?
--What do you think of them? Make a list
--What is it that you don’t want to experience with that person again?

   A thousand pens dance over the page.  How easy it is to come up with interminable answers to those questions, then flip the page over and start on someone else!

   The Judging is like peeling the garlic. The garlic press is something called The Four Questions.  You put the judgmental thought – say, “mom never loved me” -- through The Four Questions, which are:

1. Is it true?
2. Can you absolutely know it’s true?
3. How do you react when you believe that thought?
4. Who would you be without the thought?

   The you do a “turnaround,” arbitrarily changing the pronoun, verb or modfier so, instead of “mom never loved me” it becomes “mom always loved me.”  Then you run THAT through the Four Questions.  Is it true?  Well, it’s not UN-true, for most of us, is it?  Can you be absolutely sure she never loved you?  Of course not. 

  How do you FEEL when you believe that thought?  Well, how do you THINK I feel?  I feel terrible, like an abandoned orphan, like the worst person in the world.  And who would I be without that thought?  Gad, I never even considered how FREE and light and good I would be! 

   Then do a turnaround so it’s “I never loved mom” then mince that in the garlic press of the Four Questions.  You’ll probably be crying before you’re done.  Is it true?  No way.  It has been sometimes, but it’s not “the truth.”  And on and on.  You get the idea.  And, unlike many therapies, this one isn’t done when you get a few big revelations.  You keep doing the Four Questions aka “The Work” all your life, challenging any thought.  Every thought.  Eventually, you get it.  This “thinking” is the mind spinning all these stories.  It’s not “reality.”  Reality is what is, not how I interpret it.

   Moving with confident, warm and humorous stage presence, Katie, 65, with a silver pixie hair-do, doesn’t try to please those who offer their judging thoughts up for her to play with – and play she does, no kid gloves, either.

   One man, who does some social work, says he’s not successful in life. Katie asks how that thought feels.  He says “It took over my whole body.”  She says, “that’s what a lie feels like. Without that, you would be happy, joyful and loving all the time, and successful.”

   One woman speaks her thoughts of pain and grief at the death of her husband – thoughts which seem non-negotiable, because we all have to grieve such a thing and it takes years, right?  But Katie treats it like any other thought and asks that it be turned around.  “C’mon, betray your principals,” she encourages.  “What’s the good side about him being dead?  Did you fight over the TV remote?  Now you get to watch what you want!”

   Understandably, the woman said she “got it” about the process but couldn’t go there right now.

   As she works with the volunteers, Katie prods, “don’t be right, don’t be wise, allow yourself to go back to your resentment. Freedom is not complicated! Who would you be without these stories of stress? You would be beautiful. Life is a dream and you need to put these nightmares on paper. It’s a way to wake yourself out of the nightmare.

   When someone says “I love your book, the first book,” Katie says, “oh, yes, I love that one, too.”  Hey, it’s what is.  When another says “I love you,” she uses it as an opportunity to remind everyone that love is an experience and doesn’t mean you owe the person anything. It does not follow, she says, that “if you love me, then…”  Nothing follows that.

   “The mind,” Katie says, “is into winning. It’s the only way it gets to continue. The mind has to have proof (to support its thoughts) so it goes on and on and on, but only for a lifetime!”

   Katie addresses the natural reservation – natural to the conditioned mind, anyway – that, ok, this is all too simple and is asking me to become passive and disempowered by just accepting whatever reality throws at me.  Her answer?  “Is that true?”  Get it?  That’s the first question.  How can you absolutely know that (your thought) is true?  Well, it’s true because I think it and it’s logical and I want it to be true and I want to be in control, “making up” my own mind.  (Interesting that we “make up” our minds, no?).

   But seriously, folks, how do you react to that thought?  Well, it kinda feels like I have to run the universe, at least my own corner of it and it will never stop, this standing in the batting cage, whacking each very familiar thought as it comes up and pretending I’m awesome because I’m in control. 

   Now the acid test – who would you be without that thought?  That’s for you to answer. 

   In her book, “Loving What Is,” Katie writes, “ The Work reveals that what you think shouldn’t have happened, should have happened.  It should have happened because it did and no thinking in the world can change it.  This doesn’t mean you condone or approve of it. It just means that you can see things without resistance and without the confusion of your inner struggle…

   “I am a lover of what is, not because I’m a spiritual person, but because it hurts when I argue with reality.  We can know that reality is good just as it is, because when we argue with it, we experience tension and frustration. We don’t feel natural or balanced.  When we stop opposing reality, action becomes simple, fluid, kind and fearless.”   ~






Lenn Laskow: Healing With Love

   In a meditation one night, Leonard Laskow, a physician, had a vision that love is the key to healing. From there, he realized that if you accept that all things, including pathogens, have the right to live, then you can “introduce an intention” to greatly slow their growth rate -- allowing the body’s immune system to do the rest.

   Now retired in Ashland from his ob-gyn practice in California, Laskow lectures widely -- France, Switzerland and India are coming up -- on ideas from his 1992 book Healing With Love: a Breakthrough Mind/Body Medical Program for Healing Yourself and Others.

   Laskow’s game-changing meditation, 35 years ago, came as an “inner luminosity” and an inner voice telling him his life work would be “healing with love,” something he applied within hours, he says, intuitively sending a “radiant sun” from his heart into the tumor-filled lungs of a struggling retreat colleague. The friend’s pain went away and, when they met a decade later, was still gone.

   “He said I was a real healer. I realized I was healing with love. It was a miracle, a spontaneous remission. They looked at his x-rays and said ‘this can’t be you; there’s nothing here.’ I can’t say I had anything to do with it,” notes Laskow. “He yanked out his chemo IV, accepted his fate, wherever it went, listened to Bach and Mozart and felt incredible peace.”

   Not one to depend on healing light and miracles, Laskow approached these new dimensions within the bounds of science, working with several Bay Area labs and universities to quantify what works and checking it against controls and placebos.

   Working with human subjects was one thing; they have all kinds of conscious and unconscious mindsets and behaviors, not to mention cultural and religious inputs, that can skew experiments. The perfect subjects, Laskow decided, were one-celled organisms, who had no enculturation -- and presumably no thoughts at all.

   “I worked with bacteria and cancer cells in a petri dish. Looking at them through a microscope, I had this epiphany that they are created by the same Creator as we are. They have as much right to live as me, though I always regarded them as a pathogen.

   “It was a shift in consciousness. All human conditioning dropped away and all that remained was my and this bacteria’s consciousness. We resonated and became one and that’s the important secret. When I totally and unconditionally accept them, that’s another way of saying love.”

   In this “loving field,” Laskow “introduced an intention” that the bacteria reduce their growth rate. He got a 50 percent reduction compared to controls (bacteria to whom nothing was done), he says.

   Working with cancer cells in a tissue culture, Laskow reduced the growth rate by 40 percent, he notes, adding, “The intent is not to destroy them. You come in loving resonance with them, then introduce the new intention. If you reduce the growth rate, the T-cells can finish the job.”

   If love and a shared, sympathetic understanding between us and “pathogens” can achieve healing, then, clearly, we humans are conditioned with some serious baggage that prevents that.

   True, says Laskow -- it’s that sense of separation, not just from other people, but from self, environment and the divine forces behind everything.

   “It comes from that cultural, societal belief and judgment, from seeing others as different, which they are, but mistaking that for separation -- or it could be real wounds early in life or interpretations of events, leaving beliefs such as ‘I’m not good enough’ or ‘I was a mistake.’ ”

   The trick about such healing, he notes, is not to make your mind or heart do something, but “to realize, in the deepest sense, that this sense of separation is what’s making us sick, that and our resistance to what is, which is oneness.”

   Maintaining this sense of illusory separation takes a lot of energy -- and freeing up that energy allows it to be redirected, he says, to healing with love.

   Cancer, based in our own cells, should be envisioned like this: the body is an orchestra of 50 tillion cells all playing the same music, except there’s a small group of musicians totally out of harmony and you are the conductor.

   “You have to relate to them, make contact with them,” he says. “In lab research, I worked with five intentions and found the most effective one is, ‘Return to your natural order and harmony of pre-hyperactive cell life.’”

   Laskow calls his work HoloEnergetic Healing, something he has taught at Esalen Institute in Big Sur for 14 years in a series of workshops called, Open to Oneness Through Love, Awakening Your Healing Heart and The Art & Science of Healing With Love.

  Laskow occasionally leads workshops locally. He does phone and private consultations in Ashland and is reachable at 541-482-3033 or leonard@laskow.net. See his Facebook or site, www.lasknow.net.  ~








Gangaji: About Silent,
Intelligent Love,You Are That

   Noted New Age teacher and author Gangaji has moved to Ashland from Marin County with her staff of 12, occupying the old Tara Labs on Hwy 66, as a base for her seminars, which orient adherents to overcome suffering by tapping into the “silent, intelligent love” in the individual.

   Gangaji and her husband, fellow teacher-author Eli Jaxon-Bear join a raft of other noted consciousness leaders and authors who located to Ashland in the last decade, including Jean Houston, Gary Zukav, Jose Arguelles and Neale Donald Walsch.

   Why relocate to tiny Ashland from densely-populated Marin County, a nucleus of New Age activity? “Quality of life, no commuting – and the people here pretty much demanded we move here when we lectured in Ashland last August,” joked the silver-haired Gangaji.

   Gangaji and Jaxon-Bear “received the transmission” (teaching) of holy man Poonjaji in India in 1991 and were instructed to bring the information to the West, she said. Separately and together, the two teach at workshops and retreats in the more liberal “blue states” of the U.S. and also in Europe.

   Gangaji attained note in the 1990s with her book “You Are That; Satsang with Gangaji” and her shows on cable access tv, where she became known for her simply stated message, delivered in calm, soothing tones.

   Jaxon-Bear, an anti-war and civil rights activist in the South in the mid-1960’s, authored “Sudden Awakening” and “The Enneagram of Liberation.” He rejected the “politics of blame and confrontation” as he realized that blame is “only a projection of what’s wrong with oneself,” he said.

   Gangaji, born Toni Varner in Mississippi, will now merge foundations and operations with Jaxon-Bear’s Leela Foundation, which is dedicated to “world peace and freedom through universal self-realization.”

   The teaching of Gangaji is “very simple,” she said. “Take a moment, stop everything you’re trying to do, be still and investigate what’s right here without letting your mind and ego overlay it. What’s here is peace, satisfaction and fulfillment. That’s the nature of the true self.”

   Jane Sterling of Ashland called the arrival of Gangaji “an incredible gift, that brings a whole community and family here to expand the consciousness community that’s already here.”

   At an open house for the Gangaji organization here Wednesday evening, Gaelyn Larrick of Ashland said “in a community already blessed with many spiritual teachers, this gives people direct access to one of the great ones.”

   Said Melanie Lancaster of Ashland, “It’s fabulous to have such a fine spiritual leader here. She reminds me who I really am.”

   Although Gangaji is considered one of the top alternative spirituality teachers in the country, she eschews doctrines, beliefs and concepts, preferring instead, she said, to help people “forget all teachings, forget what you have and don’t have and find what’s at the bottom of it all, what was here before all this and will be here after all this – the simplicity and thrill of reeling back the mind and knowing the miracle of being here.”

   Jaxon-Bear echoed similar themes, garnered from the same teacher, Poonjaji, himself a disciple of the famed Ramana Maharshi.

   “To find freedom, you have to know what you want and most people don’t examine that,” said Jaxon-Bear, noting that most spiritual teachings are rationalized and conceptualized to serve the personal ego, which leads to further suffering and ignorance of who we really are.

   Who are we really? “Silent, empty, conscious, intelligent love,” said Jaxon-Bear.

   Society, he said, has suffered many “psychic wounds,” such as Nazism, Vietnam and 9/11, all of which have presented the opportunity for “openness and treating people with kindness and enlightenment,” but all of which have been “papered over.”

   “All the preaching has to stop,” said Gangaji. “All concepts and beliefs are useful along the way, but they’re finally in the way. They’re finally traps. If we believe our thoughts are reality, it’s crazymaking.”

   The couple said their teachings, modeled after their guru’s method, is to “set you on fire, then be there to roll the logs back in the fire that roll out.”

   Although most “meetings” staged by Gangaji and Jaxon-Bear are out of the area, they will be holding some in Ashland, starting in February – on the 13th for Gangaji and the 1st for Jaxon-Bear. Information is available at 482-3100.   ~






Jose Argelles: A Great Morass
Known as Karmic Gridlock

   If the world seems increasingly complex, stressful and overpopulated, it’s all part of the plan, according to noted New Age guru – and now Ashland resident -- Jose Arguelles, leading on Dec. 21, 2012 to the end of the world as we know it and the beginning of a new era of peace, creative arts, attunement to nature, higher consciousness and simple, collective living.

   Arguelles, the man behind the 1987 Harmonic Convergence and the author of “The Mayan Factor” in the same year, has set up shop as the Time is Art Gallery in Ashland’s railroad district, where he displays his exotic art (painted on doors) and promotes a new kind of calendar – a 13-moon calendar he says will help get humanity back in harmony with nature’s cycles.

      The new calendar, to be adopted by followers July 25 during a three-day festival in Ashland and other places creates 13 months, one for each cycle of the moon during a solar year. This totals 364 days with one “Day Out of Time” every July 25. Each 28-day month has four weeks of seven days.

   Why is time so important? Because the “clunky” Gregorian calendar, created by Pope Gregory and ancient Roman emperors is not based on natural cycles and thus “creates intrinsic, unconscious confusion in our minds,” Arguelles said, which underlies much of society’s ills – pollution, war, injustice and economic inequality.

   Celebrations will mark the time switch in many towns around the world, including 80 in Brazil. The Day Out of Time and adoption of the new calender will be held in Ashland with the New Humanity Festival of the Future, featuring speakers, ecological demonstrations, spiritual dance music and ceremonies of universal forgiveness and global meditation, these in Lithia Park, the old armory and Windmills Inn.

   Arguelles, 65, a former University of Chicago art professor, in 1970 created the Whole Earth Festival (still running annually) in Davis, Calif. Using the Mayan calendar, he organized the widely celebrated Harmonic Convergence in 1987 as a 25-year countdown to 2012, when the Closing of the Cycle of 5,125 years will occur.

   In these remaining eight years, he predicts the collapse or transformation of all civilization’s institutions, from schools and marriage to religions and governments. In their place, if humanity has evolved enough by then, will be a peaceful, communal culture living in harmony with nature and devoting a lot of time to the arts, which include gardening and cooking.

   “When you say 2012, it makes a lot of people jump,” Arguelles said, “but that’s because everyone knows something’s got to give. Human population has doubled since 1960 and I can’t tell you how many species have become extinct or people who’ve died in wars, but we’re on the brink of disaster for the environment and for civilization.”

   To help people become more spiritual, so they can be good citizens of the new era, Arguelles promotes this “greatest mind shift in all of history” with meditation, education programs, community gardening, collective living, an art gallery and the writing of many books. The year 2013 will have a “startlingly different look,” he said.

  “Technology will be wind, solar and zero-point energy (created without expending energy). We will be highly artistic.  We’ll reforest.  We’ll communicate with telepathy.  We’ll live collectively, in peace, not in separate homes.”

   The journey to 2012 will be arduous and people are well advised, he said, to prepare themselves with a lot of meditation and inner work, such as taking responsibility for all that happens in their lives, without blaming anyone else – and to view all events, good or bad as lessons for their own learning and growth.

   “In these remaining eight years, there is more to take care of, life becomes more complex and there is less time for finer, spiritual matters.  Ignorance increases…and that in turn increases karma. When you have so much karma – unconscious effects of past actions – it becomes ossified in the intitutional complexity of industrial life.  This is experienced as a kind of clunky, difficult-to-maneuver density.  Red tape, grid lock, terrorism, longer lines, more rules, less flexibility, more machines, less manners…a great morass known as karmic gridlock,” Arguelles writes in his “Living Through the Closing of the Cycle; a Survival Guide to 2012.”

   These seemingly extreme predictions, a blend of mythology and prophesy of ancient Mayan writing, utterances of present-day Mayan elders and Arguelles’ interpretations and views, seem borne out, he said, by 9/11, war, global warming, deforestation, water shortages and other events.

   He predicts the world might prepare for the new era of peace and harmony by shedding much of its human population through global polar shift, which will scramble electronic data and communication, by earthquakes, tsunamis, movement of techtonic plates and, more likely, nuclear war arising from Mideast conflicts.

   The world will go on with or without humans, Arguelles said, but all this begs the question – is humanity going to change enough in this short time to actually survive and thrive in the new world of 2013?

   “I don’t know. There are many probabilities that could happen. I’m afraid there are going to be certain events that will reduce the world population, like a bad outbreak of war. The atomic clock is ticking toward nuclear warfare.”

   But will we survive? Arguelles’ answer is always affirmative. “Our vision is of an enlightened society and, because every thought has a charge, I spend my mental time sending out positive vibrations.”

   Arguelles’ three-person staff has begun the collective living experiment in a rented “kin house” in Ashland, an experience that communications director Jack Cornflower, 26, decribes as nurturing, with lots of gardening, meditation and communication, so “we’re all on the same page.”

   Arguelles, he said, is “a humble, intelligent, clean, honest man who has guided and helped a lot of people.”

   Staffer Jacob Wyatt, 22, said society is “close to a global catastrophe from war and environmental breakdown, but that, depending on human evolution in the near term, there are many “probabilities” that can avoid that.

   Sarah Bronson, 51, who quit her post office job in California to work for Arguelles said society has has achieved critical mass – “The wave has hit, a lot of people are waking up and we’re going to see a lot of change, good and bad, a lot of consciousness raising, moving into small communities and regaining our relationship with nature.”

   The good news, he said, is an “acceleration of dazzling new possibilities – the greatest opportunity that our souls could possibly imagine…a profoundly spiritual moment…for a mind shift back to the nurturing bosom of Mother Nature.”   ~








Robert Bly: Words of
Encouragement for Men, from Older Men

   Hailed as the father of the Men’s Movement and now a poet penning verse in an ancient Islamic form, Robert Bly will read his work Friday evening at Ashland High School, sharing the stage with storyteller Danny Dierdorff in presentation called “The Dragons of Greed and The Woodcutter’s Daughter.”

   Bly, 77, who was featured in a Bill Moyers PBS show called “A Gathering of Men,” will read poems from his books “Eating the Honey of Words” and “My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy.” (HarperCollins, 2005)

   The latter title, Bly said in an interview from his Minnesota home, is based on the idea that “I wasn’t put into jail but the other way around.” It is written in the Haiku-like Muslim form called ghazal.

  The author of the popular “Iron John: a Book About :Men,” in 1990, Bly holds regular retreats in Minnesota and Alabama where, he says, males of all ages do inner work, get “words of encouragement from older men” and “go home to have different connections with their fathers and sometimes with their wives.”

   Bly, who has written against both the Vietnam and Iraq Wars, said the men’s movement has been based on the reality that “a lot of younger men feel abandoned by older men…who tend to disappear, with loneliness on both sides.”

   Dierdorff, of Bainbridge Island, Wash., will spin a Nowegian story, “The Lind Wurm,” which tells how a happy king and queen in a happy land give birth to a perfect son, but first a little black snake is delivered by the midwife and tossed out the window, never to be seen or discussed again.

    The story, said Dierdorff in an interview, is not about the happy couple and their child, but about the snake, which represents that which is judged bad and inappropriate and is pushed outside the village into the forest, where the unknown and wanted things and creatures dwell.

   “We draw a circle around the good animals, who live inside the village wall, while the vermin and weeds are outside,” said Dierdorff. “The relevance of the story today is that it’s projection. Individuals, like nations, have a shadow side and it’s a naïve way to deal with it, to throw it out, rather than investigate and integrate it.”

   Dierdorff, 53, a polio survivor, added, “That’s the way we are America now. We can’t integrate it, so we target other cultures and have them carry our shadow for us. The problem is that projection is not a long-term fix.”

   The story is a formula about how, in order to move past denied shadow material, individuals and nations must go into the “forest,” where the unknown things are and, he said, increase their learning about self and world.

   The presentation will be filmed as part of a movie being made by Spirit World Films of Ashland, said its organizer, Steve Scholl. The event is at 7:30 p.m. Friday at AHS Mountain Avenue Theater. Tickets are $30 or $25 in advance at Bloomsbury Books in Ashland or at 301-7469.   ~








John Kalb: Winning at Aging

   There are a lot of books published on how to have an active, healthy old age -- and Ashland chirpractor John Kalb has read them all and decided to publish a whole new slant on it called “Winning at Aging: Your Game Plan for a Healthy Living.”

   Yes, it’s got chapters on healthy diet, exercise and mental activity -- the boilerplate of any such tome, but it proclaims that the real secret for good aging is not life extension or a big portfolio, but a better quality of life, one that comes from inside you and lets you experience and enjoy old age.

   “It’s a middle path,” says Kalb. “You maximize health, of course, but you don’t live in denial of aging. You nurture that which improves with age and what is it? Character and wisdom. I call it creative aging or conscious aging.”

   Aging Americans often live with “the shadow,” which is our mania for affirming youth, beauty and activity -- and it drives a lot of seniors to get face lifts, put on “gobs of makeup,” color their hair and try to look a decade or two younger, all the while denying the reality of death and not asking how it adds positively to our lives.

   “If I identify too strongly with being a young, vital, sexy person and then aging starts changing my life, I’m going to hit a point of crisis and become an angry, bitter, frustrated person,” says Kalb.

   From a million magazine articles, books and talk shows, older folks already know how to set up a good eating and workout regimen, though most Americans of every age, he notes, still “gain weight, eat junk food and sit all day at a screen.”

   Kalb, 62, goes back to square one, using famed psychogist Abraham Maslow’s pryamid-shaped “Hierarchy of Needs,” established in 1943 and stating that we all need, at the bottom level, food, water, air, sex; in the middle: family, friendship, work, self-esteem and at the top level, morality, creativity, spontaneity, problem-solving and acceptance of reality.

   “I turn that upside down, starting out by asking, why bother, why am I here, what’s really important, then, if I find that, I travel down the pyramid in style. What I recommend is to clarify your core values.”

   Kalb lists 60 values most people have and asks patients or students to prioritize them.  His top values are freedom, truth and service -- and for quality aging, he asks himself how he can live those, so as to “live on purpose.” Personally, Kalb’s top three values are freedom, truth and service.

   The unexpected results, he says, are that people who report living “meaningful lives” also test lower for cholesterol, the stress hormone cortisol and have lower systemic inflammation, which he calls “the silent killer.”

   Kalb suggests we “rustproof” our body with antioxidants, “fireproof” it from inflammation, “poison-proof” it from toxic foods and “sugar proof” it from diabetes-causing glycogens -- all of which points to a diet low in simple carbs, gluten, dairy, red meat, oil, fruit drinks and any manufactured foods.

   A good aging diet, he writes, has rice milk, nut milk, lean meats like chicken and fish, starches like rice, millet, buckwheat, breads with quinoia and amaranth, oils like olive, flax and walnut -- and lots of plain old water.

   Walking about his well landscaped yard, all done by himself, Kalb uses it as an object lesson, noting that, decades ago, he could work on a flagstone walk all day, but now he lets it be a couple hours.

   “Lower the bar. Recalibrate unreasonable expectations about appearance and performance and accept normal losses.”

   Many seniors think a high-performance portfolio will remove all the fears, stresses and dangers of aging, which Kalb calls “the money trap.”

   “We need enough money to live well but having it is no guarantee of living well. Money gets us above survival mode but people with a billion are no happier than people with a million. If it gets obsessive, that’s a downside to aging and can become like a drug. I call it affluenza.”

   In creating a game plan for healthy aging, he notes, keep in mind that “part of us wants to do the right thing but part of us has inner wounds, secrets and blocks and wants to do self-sabotage. It says I’m not good enough, not worthy and didn’t get enough unconditional love.”

   To overcome these dark parts in aging, Kalb says it’s important to sustain health, keep exercising, build friendships and engage in service outside your own world, helping make a better community and planet.

   “It’s been proven that we get physiological benefits from having meaning and purpose beyond our own selves.”

   Ironically, as we move closer to the end of life, the doors open for us to be happier, says Kalb, but to get there it’s necessary to move beyond the glamor of youth and confront the reality of death.

   The least happy decade in life is not the 70s or 80s, he says, but the 40s, as we peak out and begin colliding with the sceptre of losses -- in our beauty, power, importance.

   “Confronting death is one of the key values of aging. Death becomes an ally for a better life. If I’m in denial of death, I’m wasting time and trying to fill the void.  If I’m at peace with death, I’m free to make each moment the best I can.”


THE DO’S AND DON’TS OF AGING:

--Do eat your veggies, drink lots of water and avoid junk food, sugars, red meat, prepared dishes.

--Do exercise.  It not only keeps you healthy but it reduces stress and makes you actually happier.

--Use money to make you secure enough, but “enough is enough.” Avoid “affluenza.”

--Be active, but let yourself gracefully slow down.  You used to install a flagstone walk in a day but who cares if it takes a week now?


THE INNER GAME OF AGING:

--Identify your core values, gained from a lifetime of experience. Live these values to achieve a meaningful life. This is “the perennial wisdom of the elders” and produces inner peace, strength, health.

--Keep expanding your network of friends, using it to do greater good beyond your own personal world. Winning at aging is not about making just your world secure, but expanding to the big picture that includes us all.

--Be active, but let go the superficial things of youth that shout you’re sexy, full of energy and don’t have lines or gray hair. Old is groovy.  It’s a legitimate, good and interesting phase of life that, once accepted, opens to wisdom, peace and spiritual growth.   ~






John Gutrich:
The Gross Part of Our Gross National Product

   We’ve always calculated our Gross Domestic Product without subtracting the cost of pollution and carbon output -- and, says a Southern Oregon University professor, those days are over.

   Environmental Science Professor John Gutrich, in a new book, “Climate Change and Environmental Ethics,” says the macro-indicators like GDP may look good “but we don’t minus out the costs of pollution,” so that, with the Gulf Oil Spill it actually looked like the economy was more productive.

   Such costs have to be paid by someone -- or by other nations who, like the European Union, are taking steps toward cap-and-trade, which provides incentives for reducing emissions -- but eventually, Gutrich said, in an interview, if the US doesn’t join protocols like Kyoto, we will find ourselves subject to painful trade sanctions.

   Gutrich and a group of student-researchers are experiencing the dynamic firsthand, documenting how the City of Los Angeles is hit with hundreds of millions of dollars in environmental remediation costs because of how it got its water for the past century from nearby Owens Valley.

   As they pumped water, they killed native vegetation, says Gutrich, letting the sediment dry up and blow away, exceeding eight times the particulate pollution allowed by the Clean Air Act and infusing the atmosphere with toxic heavy metals, including arsenic and cadmium and threatening operations on a nearby air base.

   Gutrich and his team presented their findings earlier in June at University of Maryland, quantifying impacts and questioning practices, such as excessive pumping in drought times -- and outlined strategies that serve goals of maintaining vegetation while providing affordable water.

   In the global picture, the US must step forward and take part in whatever emission-capping protocol replaces Kyoto, which expires in 2012, or this nation will be “free-riding on carbon emissions” that cause global warming and raise sea levels.

   “We need to move to a low-carbon economy that’s energy-efficient,” as we come to grips with the “tragedy of the commons,” that is, the resources of the planet used in common by all and suffering harm by emissions of any one member, says Gutrich.

   “The atmosphere is a perfect example,” he says, adding that when the US lags on capping emissions and “externalizes costs,” other nations incur those costs, such as when a small Pacific nation ends up, as is predicted, underwater because of thermal expansion of oceans from the greenhouse effect.

   As for America’s frequent objection that greenhouse gas prevention harms our economy, Gutrich writes that the argument has been settled by a report from Nicholas Stern, World Bank economist, saying the damage from climate change in this century will be 20 times the cost of solving it -- and that spending just 1 percent of GDP over the next 50 years will stabilize greenhouse gases at 25 percent above present levels.

   “This ecological economic approach based on a renewed environmental ethic calls for mitigation of the damage from global climate change with a global economy that operates within the natural capacity of the atmosphere to support all life,” wrote Gutrich, one of about a dozen contributors to the book, edited by Ved Nanda, a University of Denver environmental lawyer.

   Gutrich called for a “renewed environmental ethic,” at the personal and international levels, adding that failure to add ecological costs into market prices “will continue to mislead people.”

   Calling it a matter of “environmental justice,” Gutrich writes “the world can no longer afford economic development fueled by high carbon emissions,” adding that that rich countries got rich by high carbon emissions and poor countries are most vulnerable to their impacts.

   The book is $35, available on Amazon.   ~








Jeff Golden: Networking the Conscious World

  Using new technologies of skyping and streaming video, community activist Jeff Golden on Tuesday launched “Immense Possibilities,” a new public TV show that explores sustainability, food and energy issues, showcasing local and far-away experts along with call-in viewers.

   The show premiered with Golden, a former Jackson County Commissioner and broadcast talk show host, interviewing noted author and environmentalist Frances Moore Lappe via Skype, the free internet video app.

   The interview, focusing on food, hope and “engaged democracy,” says Lappe, can be viewed at www.immensepossibilities.com -- or it can be streamed live or at any time from that website to computers or smart phones. The show is at 7:30 pm Tuesdays on Southern Oregon Public Television.

   The show is motivated, said Golden, by the fact that “people want to get active and bring communities together and bring the most inspiring people together. Effective activism is not about pulling people to your opinion, but in making a difference in a big way so their lives are better for it.”

   The show seeks to break old boundaries, being able to be viewed anywhere in the world rather than just broadcast in its local region -- and, says Golden, being able to tap the wisdom of noted experts on issues, on-screen, anywhere in the world, and interfacing them with local people working on the same issues, technologies and solutions.
  
   “It’s a really good local effort, testing the concept of streaming on the internet and blending national content to make local points,” said Brad Fay, SOPTV director of content and services. “It’s an immediate blend of national and local, with the intent of reaching a growing niche of people interested in new solutions to old problems.”

   The show will include videos supplied by presenters and may have secondary interviews, such as the one Tuesday with Kellie Holloway, an organizer of Camp Odyssey in Oregon, which explores biases and fosters tolarance and respect for differences among people.

   Future shows, Golden says, will have interviews with Matthew Domingo of Rogue Valley Farm to School and editor Sarah vanGelder of “Yes!” Magazine, a vehicle of alternative possibilities.

   For the show and website, Golden is raising funds and receiving in-kind contributions from SOPTV, he says. The show is distinct from Golden’s Project Rogue Valley and from his “community advocate” plane, which he started with resources from his unsuccessful 2010 campaign for County Commissioner.  However, all serve similar values of investment in an environmentally sound and sustainable economy, with locally-owned businesses and small farms.

   Lappe, author of “Diet for a Small Planet” and a friend of Golden’s said she’s excited about the show’s potential, as it moves beyond the violent fare of much TV and helps people have “eyes wide open hope that we all need to stay alive.”

   Her life, and the authorship of 18 books, she says, has been about “telling stories of possibility, with the focus on food choices.”

   Lappe, in an interview from her home in Cambridge, Mass., said, “What we put in our minds and hearts is of maximum importance. Hope is work. We’ve got to make an effort to find out what is possible in a living democracy and avoid the sense of despair that comes from not engaging. Hope is not for wimps. That’s the core of my message. We have to engage in stories of possibility because we’re not finding them in the media.”

   Lappe says she will explore “the seven thought traps” and paint a new picture about ecology, that it’s not just science but “a new way of seeing ourselves that is about change, interconnection and the fact that we have a lot more power than we think.”

   Promoting her new book, “EcoMind,” Lappe said much of humanity’s woes are rooted in a false premise of “scarcity of both goods and goodness...which puts us in fear and struggle mode. It’s a pretty common environmental message, with the ‘finite earth’ having the premise of lack. These ideas are killing us. In an aligned Earth, there is no lack and there’s plenty of food.”  ~










Todd Barton:
The Consciousness of the Shakuhatchi

   On several Friday lunch hours this summer, you can escape your kitchen or cafe, trip over to the Schneider Art Museum and catch the “haunting, breathy and mysterious” sounds of the shakuhachi as this ancient Japanese bamboo flute resounds in the excellent acoustics amid the art.

   It’s free, fun, different and not planned out. Longtime local composer-performer Todd Barton -- and usually some friends -- will wing it, creating the music that comes to them as they interact with each other, listeners and whatever musical sprites happen to be influencing them on that day, in that museum, which is at the east end of Southern Oregon University, above the intersection of Ashland Street with Siskiyou Boulevard.

   “Improv is all about listening to the notes I produce and listening to where they take me,” says Barton. “Improv with another person is even more exciting. The sounds grow and develop.”

   The resident composer of Oregon Shakespeare Festival, where he’s worked for 42 years, Barton has a thing for both electronic and acoustical instruments and a love for improv that hatches performances “that are a surprise for me and the audience.”
  
   In other words, get ready for some original music, never heard by anyone and frequently interwoven with “the haunting, breathy and mysterious tones of the shakuhachi, which sound like the wind in the trees.”

   Where does the inspiration come from when you walk into a performance without any playlist or sheet music?

   From your mind and heart, of course, but, says Barton, also from the audience. “As Pauline Oliveros (electronic composer and accordionist) said, ‘if the people on stage are listening, then the people in the audience are listening.’ When that works, the audience and performer are one.”

   As the aural muse of the Festival chats, you suddenly hear tinkling, soothing music, but whence cometh these magical strains?

   “Ringtone,” says Barton.

   “Shakuhachi?”

   “Absolutely,” he notes, adding, “I got tired of hearing all these hyper, anxious tones. They’d make me hyper and anxious. These shakuhachi tones take getting used to because they don’t grab your attention. But after a while they kind of say ‘I can’t wait to talk to you.’”

   Note: you can listen and download 15 ringtones for $10 from www.toddbarton.com. The site says, “The shakuhachi flute has been used for meditation and breath work for over a millennium. With shakuhachi ringtones you’ll be gently reminded to take a breath before facing the unexpected.”

   Barton has been an adjunct professor at SOU since 1972 and teaches music composition, orchestration and compositional technique and electronic and computer music. He refers to his electronic instruments as “my sonic lego set.”   ~









Zan Nix: The Life of Passion


“Let your tears take you down to what is strong.
Let your passion say where you belong
Sing your own tune – that’s your only goal
Real love will come home to the music of your soul.”
                --Zan Nix

   For Zan Nix, it’s about passion.

   The heartful songs she writes and sings, the college classes she teaches (with titles like ‘Women and Passion’), her just-won PhD in spirituality, her runs through the woods with her two white poodles, while listening to Tina Turner on the headset – they all speak to a lifelong theme of living intentionally – and close to the bone.

   “I have a deep abiding faith in our ability to recreate ourselves again and again,” Nix wrote in the liner “This Life,” her 2001 CD. “To emerge from one bleak winter into the next creative spring. To befriend love with all its longing, excitement, sadness, bliss, rage, disappointment, surprise and transcendence. I’ve discovered this takes not only strength and vulnerability but a great sense of humor!”

   By day, Nix, 48, sells yellow pages ads for the phone company.  On her own time, with fellow Ashlander Richard Williams picking out melodies on his keyboard, Nix hammers out the highly autobiographical lyrics of her songs – words that tell of a journey through the lofty peaks and heartbreaking swamps of love.

   “Creativity is how I transform those dark, hopeless feelings,” said Nix, who can be found belting them out in a low-cut red dress at Ashland’s First Friday art walk. “It’s the hardest to love deeply and lose that love. Nothing’s been as impactful on my life or my songwriting. I have such a deep respect for love’s transformative powers, even in loss.”

   Singing her deepest truth is “like therapy, and the more authentic and transparent you can be, the better performance you’ll give,” said Nix, who often journeys to London to draw inspiration from stage musicals.

   Love’s pain has transformed her into a more kind, loving, empathic, compassionate person, she said, adding that when a heart is broken, it has more room in it.

   Nix’s mother, a single mother and sculptor, raised her and four sisters in Ashland. After starring in many high school musicals, Nix graduated from Ashland High in 1973, sold advertising with KOBI-TV in Medford and another station in San Jose before joining Qwest 15 years ago.

   Nix took voice lessons and performance workshops in 1996 and, with a 1998 concert for friends in her living room, found herself “so in my element performing.”

   Following a master’s degree in psychology at Southern Oregon University, Nix recently got her PhD in spirituality from the University of Creation Spirituality in Oakland, Calif. and, as her doctoral thesis will present a one-time concert this September in Ashland. Entitled “The Subject Tonight is Love,” (a line from the Persian mystic poet Rumi) the concert will showcase her songs, many sung in duet with friends.

   “It’ll be all the flavors of love, the sweetness, the rock energy, the heartbreak. It will be a real heartful evening – a celebration much needed -- and everyone will feel love from just being there.”

   The two courses – Living Creatively and Women and Passion – she will teach at SOU this summer cover areas that have become instinctive for Nix.

   “Women need to find out what passion is about and keep connected to it because that’s where our inspiration comes from. It’s what keeps us alive.”

   Living Creatively is about designing the elements of life – education, family, hobbies – so that “we are who we naturally are and what we are set up to be and do. We constantly need to peel away what is not that in order to release who we are.”

   Her friend and co-worker Melissa Hansson [cq], said, “She’s just one of those amazing people who, no matter where you are or what you’re going through, will say follow your dreams and passion. You can tell her anything and she’ll give you amazing insights that come from her diverse experience in travel, school and life itself.”

   Williams said of Nix, “She’s a bright light, compassionate, has deep wisdom and is very beautiful. She lives one of those great mysteries – how to be able to have hope and live your dreams and, no matter what happens, to learn and grow from it.”

   The passion – and the raucous, inimitable laugh that accompanies it – come straight from her mother Ellen, now of Palm Springs. “My confidence and fire come from her example. I never lost that connection with who I am. I can pull things off.  She taught me to see all the options and potential and look outside the box.   ~







Elizabeth Austin: Life as a Labyrinth

Elizabeth Austin likes to guide people who are trying to discover important things about themselves and life. She brings her large, portable cloth labyrinth to churches, schools or groups, so she can facilitate their journeys through her maze, which is a model of the labyrinth on the floor of Chartres Cathedral in France.

   “It’s kind of amazing how the labyrinth works to quiet the mind, lower the blood pressure, relax and engage the body and satisfy some kind of inner yearning. It’s a meditation, a spiritual tool that really lets people reflect and understand important things. They’re even putting them in hospitals around the country, as it seems to help people heal,” said Austin.

   In earlier times, she set up River School in Tennessee where she trained men to fathom the maze of Mississippi River channels -- as well as federal regulations -- on their way to being certified for their riverboat licenses.  Now, in Ashland, Austin helps teach at the Sacred Theater workshops developed by Peg Rubin, Ashland, formerly of Oregon Shakespeare Festival and often using the Festival’s plays to help students explore their personal lives.

    Not one to sit on the sidelines, Austin in 2000 jumped into Ashland’s political fray at the top, running for mayor with a strategy of pulling citizens into a debate defining the town’s core values, especially those about preserving neighborhoods, trees and a high quality of life. She lost, but, employing her skills as a registered nurse, transitioned into a post as a trained co-leader of the Community Emergency Response Team, with goals of helping people in trouble during flood, fire or other disaster.

   Furthering her guide theme, Austin, 59, is devoting her later years to serving as a personal coach, helping clients find their way through life’s big issues – how to realize career dreams, how to make better money doing what they love and are good at and, above all, how to get clear on their guiding values.

   “I work with people who’ve been successful, generally. They don’t want a therapist; they want someone to help them focus and map out the future. Usually, they’ve just hit a wall and have that gnawing sense there must be more to life than this.”

   In her Ashland office, Austin and her clients inventory skills, profile aptitudes, identify personal values and ask that question most spouses and friends don’t ask: what do you really want in life? They set mileposts and meet weekly (sometimes by phone) to keep clients accountable.  If a planned new step succeeded, Austin and clients celebrate it and, if not, they study what went wrong and learn from it.

   “My clients need someone to talk to – not a therapist – about goals and fulfillment in life, someone who can help create a framework and hold the dream with them, then hold them accountable for what they say they’re going to do. And I keep them realistic so they do things they know they’re good at.”

   Graphic designer Chris Mole’ of Ashland wanted to grow her business by becoming more organized and to make explicit contracts with her clients. “Elizabeth took me on a visualization 20 years in the future where I met myself as the person I want to be – strong, owning property, smoothly operating my business. The coaching held my feet to the fire and it was great to have someone cheer me on and note when I accomplished a goal.”

   Spouses and friends are the always-handy coach for most people, and, while it works sometimes, it has a down side, said Ernestine Griswold, a retired psychologist and Austin client, Ashland. “A coach sees you differently. She sees your potential with a certain amount of distance and doesn’t identify too much or want you to stay to close to her. A coach can push and challenge you; a friend might not.”

   Griswold used coaching to clarify her values – a love of animals, nature and social justice. “I didn’t know what to do about these things, but then Elizabeth taught me that one of the most philanthropic things I could do was to be happy.” Result: she launched into a childhood dream of acting on the stage.

   Austin learned her trade at the Coaches Training Institute in San Rafael, Calif., and now helps clients access professional networks, make contacts, use the internet, read the right books – even do stress-relieving meditation, massage and other bodywork.

   While Austin notes dismay at the slowdown of physical vitality with the years, she looks on aging as “very fascinating – I love the mystery of it.  People talk about dreading changes, but as I grow older, I’m finding it pretty sweet to savor life with a lot more pleasure than I did in before and to be able to use what I know in a satisfying way that serves others.”   ~












John Michael Greer:
The Wisdom of Ancient Druids

For the valley’s several dozen Druids, the big event of the holiday season comes tonight when Winter Solstice arrives – and they gather in circles to honor the return of lighter and longer days, then feast together.

   That’s what’s important to Druids, nature. And, although almost all written accounts of the ancient Druids have been lost, modern followers in three different local groups (called “groves”), will gather to thank and celebrate the sun and all living things, then have songs and potluck dinner.

   Most people have never even heard of Druids, ancient or modern, so, explains John Michael Greer, author and head of the Ancient Order of Druids in America (www.aoda.org), what they look like is regular folks, often wearing long white robes, “receiving the immense gifts of nature” and celebrating the start of the four seasons and mid-points between them, starting with a proclamation of peace.

   Druids, who were the philosophers and spiritual advisors of the ancient Celts of the British Isles, eschew scriptures, since there aren’t any and think religion should be kind of a cross between a fun field trip in nature and a good party, sprinkled with talks about the meaning of life, and all tied, of course, to nature,

   Greer and his wife Sara are members of the Grizzly Peak Grove. Others are the Dragon and Rose Grove in Ashland and the Clan of the Triple Horses in Medford. Together they have about 50 members.

   Being an alternative to mainstream religion, Druidism attracts individualists, who like to decide their own ethics by listening to their own inner voice and the wisdom of nature, says Ashland Druid Vern Crawford, author of “Druidic Paths; a naturalistic Druidism.”

   “Hard facts about Druids are hard to come by. We do know for sure that they existed and were the upper crust, educated intelligentsia, not serfs and also not often kings or warriors,” says Crawford, who also co-wrote “Lithia Park Woodland Trail, a Guide to Trees and Shrubs,” in 1984.

   However, people claiming to be carrying on the religion of the ancient Druids don’t know what they’re talking about, he adds, since they memorized their knowledge, refusing to write it down, so only a few oral legends survive.

   Honoring nature is foundational, so you’ll often find Druids out birdwatching, cleaning streams or planting trees, which they love (especially oaks) because they use the four elements – earth, water, air and sun, says Medford Druid Mark Teeters.

   “Trees are a symbol of growth, they observe the four seasons and they’re useful as tools, building materials and for their fruits and nuts,” says Teeters, a former Lutheran, who found his Druidic path from extensive “rim racking,” which means just free-wheeling in nature.

   “I realized I gained much more emotional clarity in nature, in the presence of something much greater, than in my very liberal and loving church,” says Teeters, noting that in Druidic ceremonies, “the emphasis is on giving thanks and focusing group thought on things other than oneself.”

   The attraction of Druidism, says Dianne York of Phoenix is the camaraderie and the honoring of nature and its cycles, especially as felt in water, rivers, seas and rain, which bring home the reminder of life’s cycles of change.

   If you don’t hear much about Druids, it’s intentional, as there’s still prejudice against anything pagan or outside the “Abrahamic” (Christian, Jewish, Islam) religions, which are monotheistic. Druids tend to be polytheistic, though their religion persisted alongside Christianity for many centuries after the conversion of the Celts of Britain, Ireland and Scotland.

   “Get three Druids together and you’ll get five opinions about that (monotheism),” laughed Greer. “There’s no flock, no overbearing patriarchy and when that does pop up, people walk away from it. Druids aren’t interested in power trips.”

   Greer, who is also a Mason and an Odd Fellow, studied and took courses for six years to become Grand Archdruid of AODA. He and his wife have made pilgrimages to the main sacred prehistoric sites of Britain – Avebury, Glastonbury and Stonehenge, although these have been found to pre-date the Celts.

   For Druids, three is a magic number and they joke that there are three vital senses – common sense, a sense of proportion and a sense of humor

   “Whether you’re walking to the store or praying in your garden,” says Sara Greer, “if you try to use those three all the time, life will be healthier, more balanced and whole.”   ~






The Goddess Temple:
Grounding Ourselves in the Divine Feminine

  We’re all familiar with the male God we’ve known for centuries. Well, get ready for a temple dedicated to the “sacred feminine” -- it’s the Ashland Goddess Temple, opening in a dome at Jackson Wellsprings under a full moon on the spring equinox.

   The Temple, founded by Graell Corsini and 18 other Ashland women, enshrines the Great Goddess Mother of ancient times, working in equal partnership with the “sacred masculine” God to “celebrate the divinity in everything,” she said.

   Avoiding use of the word “religion,” the women say the Goddess Path honors and supports all faiths, includes both genders and provides a space for ceremonies of the solstice and equinox, weddings, births, dance, music, meditation, counseling, classes in sacred subjects and alternative healing, using reiki, cranial-sacral therapy and other modalities.

   The group, which Thursday held its first ceremony -- sage smudging and annointing with water from the sacred site of Glastonbury, England -- plans a fund-raising at 4:30 pm, Sunday, Dec. 19 to pay for the $3,000 wool liner of the large dome.  It’s in the Jackson Wellsprings community room and features music, dance, performances and handmade gifts. It’s $5 and invites “festive dress.”

   The temple joins an existing mikvah pool, spring of “mother water,” and Tree of Life Garden, laid out in the pattern of the Jewish Tree of Life, representing the sacred energy centers of the human body.

   A megalithic circle will be built on-site next year by Circles for Peace of Burlington, Vt., said Avalonia Moonstone, who worked with the organization in Vermont and now lives in Ashland. They erect full-size stone circles up to 40 feet wide and 20 feet high, with stones up to 20 tons, she adds. This is in the range of the 5,000 year old Stonehenge in England.

   The dome, donated by Asha Deliverance of Pacific Domes, is covered with oriental rugs and has an altar of candles and sacred objects.  It will be staffed at all times by a “melissa” (Greek for honeybee), who will assist visitors in the various healing, learning or creative practices -- and work in service of the “Queen Bee,” a nickname for Goddess, said Corsini.

   In the long term, the group hopes to erect a permanent structure using sacred geometry and a builder from India, she notes.

   “We’re extremely supportive of self-empowerment,” said Corsini. “We hold the space to guide and facilitate for people as they come into their personal power, with the love, trust and freedom to birth their authentic selves.”

   Corsini founded AvaSha Goddess Temple in Mt. Shasta and came with two of its priestesses to found the Ashland temple. For the Ashland site, she says she “received a vision” from the Celtic Goddess Bridgit, drawing together 19 trained priestesses, the same as the number at Avalon, a mythical sacred isle associated with Glastonbury and Arthurian legend.

   The spirituality of the divine feminine is not a separate religion, said priestess Jumana King-Harris, but “a unifying force present in all things and all traditions. The feminine is always changing so it meets people were they are, with sensitivity and love.”

   Teja Shakara, one of the 19 priestesses, says, “It’s beyond faith. You don’t need faith. You receive nurturing sacred energies.”

   The temple seeks “balancing” of divine masculine and feminine, will use both men and women in ceremonies and “build a bridge” between the male and female spiritual path, said Shakara.

   The temple, said priestess Violet Moonrain McBride, “represents the great healing of the earth. We’ve gone through a long period of the Goddess, then that was erased and forgotten, and we’re completing a long period of honoring the divine masculine and now grounding the divine in the feminine receptive on earth and in that receptive place in each of us.”

   For more information on the Goddess Temple of Ashland, e-mail King-Harris at jfallingstar@gmail.com or Moonstone at avaloniamoonstone@gmail.com or Shankara at teja@yogini-bliss.com.   ~














Baha’i: Peace, Oneness of
Humanity, Gender Equality

  The Baha’i faith, which has congregations in Medford, Ashland, Phoenix and Talent, holds itself forth as a cup which contains and teaches all religions, with a goal of realizing that all humanity is one family and is meant to live in peace.

   Baha’I was proclaimed in the late 19th century by Baha’u’llah, a Persian who wrote many books on his vision of universal peace, the oneness of humanity, religion in accord with science and reason, gender equality, ending of prejudice, universal education and a world tribunal., said Jack Langford, a member of the local spiritual assembly in Ashland.

   “It (religion) is like a tree and every person is a leaf on that tree,” Langford said. “There is but one God and all people come from one single blood-related family and all prophets proclaim the same faith.”

   The progression through the centuries of God’s  messengers – Abraham, Krishna, Moses, Zoroaster, Buddha, Christ, Mohammed, Baha’u’llah and The Bab (prophet of Baha’u’llah) revealed God’s truth, but each time at a higher and more evolved level, he said.

   “Just because the more recent ones have a more developed message doesn’t invalidate any of the previous ones, any more than your 12th grade teacher would invalidate what your fourth grade teacher taught you,” Langford said.

   Religions also go astray when they fix on the teacher, rather than the teaching, he added, and therefore Baha’I people don’t use any pictures of their founder.

   Baha’I is one of the fastest growing religions in the country, with 1,200 “communities,” said Dr. David Young, Medford dermatologist, who is one of nine elected members of the National Spiritual Assembly.

   It was prophesied by Abdu’l-Baha, son of Baha’u’llah, that the U.S. will ultimately lead all nations spiritually – this because it’s founded on traditions of justice and equality for all and on the oneness of humanity, Young said.

   “He said this country would endure forever and never be defeated or eliminated and that we would eventually lead all nations spiritually, but only through prolonged struggle to fully realize the spiritual principles on which we were founded,” Davis said.

   Coming as they do from the heart of Muslim territory, Baha’I followers were and still are viewed as threats to the prevailing culture and power structures and have been harshly persecuted – over 30,000 executed over the past 150 years, said Melissa Lansing, a member of Ashland’s nine-member local spiritual assembly.

   The Bab (“the gate”), was shot by firing squad in 1850, while Baha’u’llah spent 40 years in jail, writing over 100 books on the faith. His most famous quote is: “Ye are fruits of one branch. The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens.” He died in 1892.

   Baha’I members here meet every 19 days (a sacred number to them), sing songs, read sacred scriptures from various faiths and have discussions. They don’t have ministers and no one preaches sermons. They also hold a “feast” (school) every other Sunday to socialize and learn about all spiritual paths.
  
   Members pledge to fast for 19 days in March, observe feasts and holy days, avoid alcohol and drugs, avoid partisan politics, pray and read scripture every day, consider work as worship and avoid gossip.

   Photos of Baha’I members invariably show smiling men, women and children of all nationalities and colors. “That’s God’s way,” said Lansing. “God favors all people getting together and overcoming ethnic and gender lines and being one happy family.”

   Many of Baha’u’llah’s teachings, radical in the mid-1800s, are coming to pass, she said, most notably equal rights for women, the acceptance of science by most religions and the stigmatization of racial prejudice. A congress of nations and world tribunal are still works in progress, she added.

   “There’s an urgency now to share his teachings,” she said. “because they contain the remedy to get us out of so many predicaments that we’re in now. Nations need to find a way to unite. He said the world would have no peace till women achieve their rightful place and, as that comes to pass, ultimately, the world is going to unite and achieve peace.”

   Davis said, “Humanity is in a desperate struggle  and it’s a time of great turmoil, but the ultimate future will be a time of tranquility and fulfillment, as the latent powers that we possess come into fruition.”

   Interested persons may contact Lansing regarding Ashland meetings at 552-1657; all others may call Ernie Sheehan at 773-1683.   ~







Kurt Katzmar: Creating a
Liberal, Loving Church Congregation 

After careers in finance in Washington, D.C. and several years as local public radio DJ – spinning classical tunes on Morning Edition – Kurt Katzmar is back in the fold, taking over as minister of Medford’s Congregational United Church of Christ.

   Katzmar will be installed this Sunday in a special 3 p.m. service at the church, 1801 E. Jackson St., by the church’s Pacific Conference Minister, John Gantt of Portland, with wine and cheese reception following.

   Leading the 120-member congregation in search of “the wonderful river of spirituality where God embraces all people,” Katzmar, 52, returns to a church post after 18 years of ministerial work in Cleveland, upstate New York and in inner-city Chicago, where he led a daily “survival prayer group,” combined with practical moneymaking strategies for Latinos and poor whites.

   His four years at Jefferson Public Radio have been a time of “relearning inner spiritual disciplines” that are closer to the real teachings of Jesus, as the peacemaker who taught that the meek are blessed and the realm of God is within you now, Katzmar said.

   The church will continue its liberal spiritual message, entwined with its age-old Christian tradition, a philosophy that “all are one,” yet members are free to adhere to their own religious and political choices.

   “Everyone is welcome at our table, no matter what labels may have been placed on people or wherever people are on their spiritual journeys,” he said. “We have no categories for distinguishing among people by sexual orientation or marital status. We would no more single out those things than we would people’s skin color, credit score or blood type.”

   Katzmar replaces Paul Robinson, the church’s pastor for 10 years, now community relations director for Planned Parenthood here. Katzmar, the son of late Medford Airport director Gunnar Katzmar, is a graduate of Chicago Theological Seminary. He was director of the U.S. Treasury’s Office of New York Finance in Washington D.C. He and his wife Marcia are members of the Southern Oregon Repertory Singers. Marcia leads the church choir.

   Katzmar calls his church “radically inclusive” – a place that “doesn’t have a category for sinners” and “doesn’t talk much about hate,” a reference to the saying, “love the sinner, hate the sin.”

   Said Katzmar, “Sin is Greek and it means missing the mark. Everyone misses the mark. We talk about how God loves human beings and we’re here to affirm and encourage the oneness we all have in God, through the model of Jesus.”

   In his ministry at the church, which started in August, Katzmar said he has supported members to “look inward and do the inner work” through discussion of faith, mysticism and prayer and how these change society.

   “Jesus, when we meditate on his sayings, has everything to say about this inner change and the change it brings to society. Without this inner grounding, what you’re saying is so much bluster. What we need is spiritual depth to practice the teachings of Jesus.”

   The essence of Jesus’s teachings, he added, is that the realm of God is indeed at hand, right here and now and it’s our task to engage in “metanoia” or turning around from the direction we’re going and facing God, he said.

   “Almost everything Jesus said looks both within and “up unto the hills” so “the words have to be studied with the head, apprehended with the spirit and embodied with prayer,” Katzmar noted.

   Although our life experiences as individuals are vastly different, Jesus’s words inspire us, he added, to realize who we are and how similar we and our neighbor are in God.

   “What we have in common can be understood readily. Hope is always right here in front of us, coming into being. That’s why we are here, even though all we can affect may be our own little corner of the world,” Katzmar said.

   We live in a critical time when we’re being called to inner work toward a spirituality, not a religion, that unites people, he said.

   “We have no choice but to find a common ground that apprehends our commonality as humans, how we are interrelated as people with each other and in nature and (if we don’t) then we’re kind of doomed,” Katzmar observed.

   The “seven sisters” (main Protestant denominations of the previous century) have been “sidelined” by the new, more conservative, nondenominational churches, he said. “We were dominant and are no longer because we offered very few simple answers and insisted that the inner work be done. We can’t merely assent to creeds and political stances. We ask who are you from the very inside and Jesus gives clues to that.”

   Shirley Sturgill of Medford, who served on the minister search committee over the past year, said Katzmar was chosen because “he’s articulate, with wit and wisdom, a spiritual leader, someone who knows how we’re all connected in the fullness of God.”

   Katzmar was chosen from 35 candidates, said the church’s moderator, Teddie Hight of Medford. “We’re all excited and a little scared,” she said. “We know we’re an older congregation and that change is important -- and if we don’t change, we won’t be a church in ten or fifteen years.”

  Former JPR colleague Bryon Lambert, the assistant program director recalled Katzmar as a “great guy, warm and loving person and well-liked by listeners and colleagues.” Lambert will speak at the installation service.   ~







Sufi: Holding the Hand of God

  For ten years, people have been coming to the Sufi dances in Ashland, chanting melodic phrases and, with blissful smiles, walking their gentle, rhythmic circle dances to the sound of drums.

   “I want to hold the hand of God and this is as close as it gets,” said Sufi dancer Makin Steritz, Ashland. “I don’t want to wait till the end of my life. I want to do it in the next breath.” (Western Sufis use Sufi names as well as their birth names.)

   “These dances allow  me to continue opening my heart,” said Majida Acker, Ashland. “They instill peace by connecting me to God. The joy and comfort I get remind me I’m connected to all humans, plants, animals, also to all pain and suffering and so I open my heart to all joy, peace and beauty in life.”

   “It’s my prime spiritual practice,” said Vadan Rogers, Ashland. “It took a long time, but now I just sing and dance without self-consciousness and I just am.”

   “The singing opens my heart and connects me with God,” said Shakura Brellochs, Ashland. “With dance I reach a state of celebration. The idea of separation fades away and I reach tremendous joy for life and for being a human on this incredible planet.”

   The public is welcome to the Dances of Universal Peace every first and third Friday at 7:30 p.m., Headwaters Bldg., 4th at C, Ashland. More serious Sufi students may move on to weekly classes at a dome on the land of Sufi teachers (and dance leaders) Khalil Hkalil and Sheikha Nurjamila. They describe classes as “like a long-term seminary but without text or dogma.”

   “The dances are a body prayer,” said Nurjamila. “They offer a safe loving container for people to open their hearts and live through their hearts. The mantras (chanted phrases) are ancient and have a power of their own. Their message is that we’re all one – a message of unity.”

   Sufi was born in that cradle of all the present great religions – the Mideast – as a mystical offshoot of Islam. However, it sees itself as “not under Islam” and differing from Islam in its emphasis on unity – seeing all religions and peoples as being on the same path toward God, said Khalil.

   “A Sufi is one who has risen above all distinctions and differences that divide people,” he said. “Sufism is not a religion; it is a path of awakening and can be embraced by Buddhists, Christians, anyone.

   Sufis avoid “button pushing words” such as Lord, God and Allah, instead using the word “unity.”

   They eschew quibbling over scriptures and interprets sacred texts “esoterically,” Khalil said, so that the Sword of Islam shifts from its conquering connotations and becomes the act of carving impurities from one’s ego.     

   “Or Noah’s ark takes on the new meaning of rescuing oneself from the flood of materialism in modern society. Christ’s resurrection informs us about our own awakening and growing to Christ consciousness.”

   In their ongoing classes, Sufis work with breath, sound and powers of concentration toward the goal of understanding that happiness can’t come from external things, but from seeing the divine presence in all things and circumstances, Khalil said.

   Speaking of unity, Khalil noted that Sufis like the sound “ah” because it’s found in so many sacred chants, songs and words – God, Allah, Ram, Ra (Egytian god) and Aloha. “It resonates in the heart.”

   The Sufi practiced by the Ashland Heart Circle comes down from the Sufi master Hazrat Inayat Khan, who brought it to the West from India about 90 years ago and taught the mystical folk dances accompanying it.

   “The dances use kinesthetics, melody and sacred phrasing from all the world’s religions in a setting of fellowship to cultivate the heart’s devotion and awakening to our true nature, which is connected to the divine,” said Khalil. “To Sufis, there is but god alone and the dances are a testimony to that.”   ~








Wicca: Everything is
Spiritual & It Was Here First

   They gather in circles to create “sacred space” under the full moon, chant and cast spells to create postive changes in their lives and they pray to the Goddess, a Great Mother figure symbolizing Earth or life – but most practitioners of Wicca religion, remembering the witch burning times, still don’t want their real names publicized.

   “There are a lot of us,” said Wolfdreamer, 53, a Grants Pass nurse, astrologe and Wiccan teacher. “We’re everywhere. We’re the person next to you in the gym and the check-out line. Most of us are solitary practitioners but I’m coming out of the broom closet and trying to spread the proper knowledge about wicca through my classes.”

   The proper knowledge, Wolfdreamer said, is that Wicca answers a longing for spirituality deeply connected with nature and lived with emphasis on this earthly life, rather than an afterlife.

   Wiccans cast spells, she said, which are rituals done with candles, oils, incense, chants and prayers at the fortuitous phases of the moon – waxing for increasing love, prosperity, creativity or other goal, waning to banish unwanted things.

   “Spells are done to manifest – a new home or car, a loving partner – and use a lot of visualization and meditation,” said Kathy Kali, 31, of Williams, who teaches “Wicca 101” at Two Sisterz, a pagan book and artifact shop in Grants Pass.

   “It’s simple, actually,” said Kali. “To find my husband, I spoke phrases and put pictures at my altar, showing my intended beloved and how love would work. One month later he walked into my life at a crafts fair and now we’re happy and very much in love.”

   For Iris, an Ashland barista, Wiccan rites are “a time to ask for guidance, to honor the Goddess within and to ask  that my higher intent and divine will be supported on the right path. I’ve seen the direct results in my personal life and habits.”

   Wicca attracts followers now because more people want to defend a beleaguered earth, because they have more access to information and are more free to choose than 50 years ago and because the Wiccan way encourages tuning into one’s own intuition and choice, “encouraging inner wisdom,” rather than following prescribed doctrine, Kali noted.

   Being an earth-based religion (rather than sky-based, like most major religions), Wicca has a strong feminine element, she said, empowering women -- but making the path challenging to most men.

   “To walk the pagan path means you fully honor the feminine, which is the source of life personally and globally,” Kali said. “For men, this requires great humility.”

   It’s common for women to gather in female-only circles or covens, often practicing the Dianic tradition, created by author Z. Budapest in the 1970s to incorporate modern feminism and grow the spiritual power of women, said Kali.

   While the Goddess is central, Wiccans and neo-pagans are eclectic, turning to Egyptian, ancient Greek, Nordic, Hindu or even Native American traditions for their deities.

   For instance, Two Sisterz owner Rhonda Sheldon, 43, of Grants Pass will turn to the ancient Roman goddess Diana, a virgin huntress and protector of childbirth, when she needs courage and strength to face a difficult life situation.

   “People don’t think we pray, but we do, every day, just like they do,” she said. “and it might be in a sacred circle or just driving in your car, but it’s all prayer.”

   “We’re very sensitive to the fact that everything is spiritual and it was all here first,” said janitor Peter Jaekle, 32, of Grants Pass. “We worship many gods and goddesses in a pantheistic way. My religion is very personal, something I carry with me and don’t push on anyone.”

   Alicia, 23, of Wilderville, does Wicca, blended with the sacred Celtic and Nordic traditions, a path she first set foot on “when I was kicked out of church in my teens for asking too many questions and refusing to take off my medicine pouch necklace.”

   Movies such as Harry Potter, The Ring and Practical Magic helped open her and many young people to the “magick” of Wicca, she added.

   Zarifa Snowman, 45, of Grants Pass operates in the Ancient Egyptian tradition, worshipping the goddess Isis, performing rituals to help people with emotional problems and giving blessings as a priestess of the Temple of Isis, an organization headquartered in Geyserville, Calif.

   No religion faces the public relations problems faced by Wicca, said Kali, most it being a hangover from the “Burning Times” of the 14th through 16th centuries, when millions of witches were condemned on charges of casting spells on others, performing sacrifices and consorting with the devil.

   Witches or “wise women,” never did any of these things – and the devil was a purely Christian invention, said Iris, an Ashland barista. “They (witches) were heavily persecuted and branded as evil by a patriarchal society for rebelling against the church by using herbs and spiritual practices as midwives, to relieve pain and facilitate contraception and abortion.”

   Added Kali, “They were burned because they held power that threatened the patriarchal power structure of the time. It’s seeing a resurgence in present-day fundamentalism, which I see as a backlash against the rise of paganism and the gains of women.”

   Far from proselytizing or saving souls, Wiccans display a pronounced “take it or leave it” approach to The Craft, as it is called.

   Most practice alone, with a preference for the out-of-doors, or gather in ephemeral classes on candle magic, moon cycles and such. They tend to characterize ongoing services as too much like organized religion, said Carmen, 57, a Wiccan and retired legal secretary in Grants Pass.

   “I was raised Catholic and I have nothing against any other religion,” Carmen said. “I would never wear a pentacle (the five-piointed Wiccan star, symbolizing the four elements of earth, fire, air and water, plus spirit) tatooed on my forehead and say mine was the only true way.”

   The Wiccan way is grounded in the “Wiccan Rede,” a long verse which starts with, “Bide within the law you must, in perfect love and perfect trust” and ends, “Eight words the Rede fulfill, and ye harm none, do what ye will.”

   Said Iris, “It’s about spiritual respect for the earth, oneself and all life – and the magic that exists within the journey of life and death. It has encouraged me to trust myself, be a better person and do the greatest good I can.”   ~







Zen: There’s Always a Way to Peace

 Seeking to remind the world that there’s always a way to peace, the Ashland Zen Center is making hundreds of Jizos – images of a protective Japanese saint named Jizo, – to be taken to Hiroshima for the 60th anniversary of the nuclear attacks that killed 270,000 people there.

   This Saturday, the Zen Center hosts a Jizo-making gathering, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., at the Ashland Community Center on Winburn Way – inviting members of all faiths and the general public to make cloth flags or statuettes of Jizo. (Information, 535-1418)

   The “Jizos for Peace” Project, a global effort, started at a Zen monastery in Clatskanie, Ore. and has spread over the globe, with a goal of 270,000 Jizos, one for each victim of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. About 200,000 have been made so far.

   “It’s a rare opportunity for everyone to connect with the people of Hiroshima and to express compassion for the horror and devastation that happened there,” said Rev. Etsudo Patty Krahl of Ashland Zen Center.

   The project is a “gesture of goodwill and reparation from one country to another,” said Krahl, “one that shows we can move on after an atrocity and extend each other a warm hand.”

   Art-craft tools will be provided Saturday for the public to create Jizos, most of which are images drawn or painted on an 8.5 x 11-inch piece of muslin. These may be stitched together to make quilts, such as are on display in downtown shop windows, including One World and Lithia Fountain and Grill.

   “It’s an endearing process and I believe in the power of intention,” said One World owner Dana Ahern. “My intention in making and displaying them is to create a more loving and healing space in the world.”

   The Jizo panels on display usually show many of the smiling, diminutive figures gathered peaceably by rivers, under rainbows, on clouds – along with positive slogans about peace.

   A Jizo by Barbara Mathieson of Ashland reads, “May all beings live in harmony and peace.” One by Billie Rose of Medford says, “The world is peace.” Another, showing Jizos as butterflies, says, “Peace is precious.”

   “I’m taking my family to make Jizos and, since they are images of a little bald person, that will be a natural for me,” said the bald Rev. Scott Dalgarno of Ashland’s First Presbyterian Church, who has invited his congregation to the project.

   “They’ve responded real well. It’s that kind of church,” said Dalgarno. “It’s a wonderful way to reach out to Japan and, in a time of war, what better way to balance that and do something positive in the face of 100,000 non-combatants killed in the Iraq War.”

   The Jizos for Peace Project is not political, nor are the events fund-raisers for any cause, said Rev. Jintei Harold Little of Ashland Zen Center.

   “The sweet, baby-like Jizos are about seeing people as friends, who are similar to us, rather than seeing enemies,” Little said. “We in this country want to say in some way that we understand what happened there and it shouldn’t happen to anyone again.”

   The effort, started by pediatrician and Zen abbess Jan Bays of the Great Vow Zen Monastery in Clatskanie, expresses a fundamental belief of Buddhists, that “we are all together, one family, not separate,” added Little.

   Betty Jean Kelsey of Talent got started on her 108 panels (one for each bead on her prayer bead loop) at a Zen Center women’s retreat last fall “as part of my compassion for them and as a way of saying I’m sorry for what happened to so many innocent people.”

   Said peace activist and Zen Buddhist Dot Fisher-Smith of Ashland, making Jizos is “a way for people to meditate on that dreadful history, to connect compassionately with the people of Hiroshima and to pay homage to all those people who needlessly lost their lives.”

   Jizo is much like the Catholic St. Christopher, the patron saint of travelers – except that Jizo also watches over women and children, said Krahl, noting that, because men were away at war during the nuclear attacks, it was mostly women and children who died.

   The Jizos, mostly made in the form of small prayer flags, are being created across the world in schools, churches, prisons and community gatherings like the one here Saturday, said Krahl. They will be taken to Hiroshima for a ceremony on the anniversary date this August.

   The effect of the massive project, she added, might be “to find ways not to forget our past but to heal it and, when we get into conflict, to keep an open-hearted feeling and communicate openly, so we can work together on problems we have – and find solutions other than dropping atomic bombs on women and children.”   ~








Debra Hurt: Balancing Energy
Should Be Like Brushing Your Teeth

  If it isn’t fun, Debra Hurt isn’t going to do it.  A longtime Ashland energy kinesiologist and artist, Hurt this weekend is offering an unusual (and fun) seminar combining the healing arts and the visual arts, learning how to balance and harmonize the body’s energy centers (charkas) – as well as creating a colorful piece of chakra art.

   The class, “The Art and Energy of the Chakras,” teaches the use of energy kinesiology – energy testing and muscle testing to discover where the body is out of balance and then using simple acupuncture meridian touch to restore that balance, said Hurt.

   “It’s a gentle, non-invasive method, using the hands, to bring harmony to body, mind and emotions, countering our cultural predisposition of gathering energy to our heads for use by the intellect, thus separating us from the perceptions gathered by the heart and gut,” said Hurt, who teaches the class is all day Saturday and Sunday at Nuwandart Art Gallery on A St. in Ashland. It costs $150 (488-5872).

   Hurt learned kinesiology 18 years ago from master practitioner Donna Eden of Ashland and Florida, author of “Energy Medicine.”

   Hurt combines it with verbal counseling and guided visualization, operating on the understanding, said client Alex Forrester of Ashland, that “we each have an invisible energy field around us that’s affected by what we do, think and say,” with outcomes in health or illness.

   Forrester, a land use planner, suffered from necrosis of a knee bone after a fall and the doctors were talking about knee replacement, he said. After six weeks of kinesiology with Hurt, with explorations of personal attitudes and expectations, he learned the root causes of the energy at work in the injured bone and, when he visited an osteopathic surgeon, he was told he was 90 percent healed and needed only some physical therapy, he reported.

   “She specializes in treating the energy, in finding out what’s behind this, because something is trying to come out,” Forrester said.

   Hurt teaches the system of chakras, the subtle energy system that governs the nervous system – each chakra carrying an electromagnetic field that moves out from the body and interpenetrates it.

   “Learning to balance and harmonize the chakra system makes it easier to manage emotions, stress, induce calmness, stop mental chatter, perform better in school and work and get along with your partner,” said Hurt.

   A balanced energy system allows one to be more tuned into body wisdom, such as that of “gut instinct,” which is information from a part of the body that, unlike the mind, “has not yet evolved to experience self doubt,” she noted.

   For the artistic dimension of her teachings, Hurt, a former stage designer and scenic artist, has students do a creative visualization of the nature and energy patterns of each of their chakras, then paint them on fabric, putting the paintings together as an artistic representation of their energy system to later use as a memory tool in meditation and healing.

   Students learn the use of flower essences, which are “bottled energy patterns” that carry a specific frequency to balance the chakra system, she said.

   When Hurt was learning kinesiology, she treated a son with attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder. “He was a maniac, out of control. I would read him a bedtime story, then clear his chakras. In a few months, he was a different kid, much more in his body and comfortable with himself.”

   Said Hurt, “What it does is support wellness and prevent the return of disharmonies and brings about a return to balance. You should clear your chakras like you brush your teeth.”   ~







CoHousing: Being There
For Each Other - And It’s Cheaper

The valley’s first co-housing project is well under construction, has almost all of its homes sold and is set to be up and running by July.

   Based on alternative energy, community gardening and “being there” for each other in a multi-generational, interactive setting, the $3.2 million, 13-home project is seeing the rafters rise after a contentious journey through city hall. 

   Aiming for affordability in the spendy Ashland market, the Fordyce Street co-housing community has sold 10 of its homes and still has three for sale – a pair of 3-bedroom homes under 1,500 square feet for $315,000 and a four bedroom home for $340,000, says senior member Doug Huston.

  The group will hold its annual public forum 3 to 5 p.m. Saturday at the Ashland Community Food Store community room, 195 A St. Information: Doug Huston, 773-8402, and http://www.ashlandcoho.com/cgi-bin/view/FSCC/WebHome.

   The meeting is to promote sales and educate the public on what co-housing is and isn’t – and to give people an idea if they’d like such a close living arrangement.

   The main misconception, says Huston, is that co-housing is a commune. It isn’t. You still own and sell your own home but you share ownership in a garden, open space and commons hall, which has a kitchen, dining room, children’s play area and multi-purpose room for arts, crafts and yoga.

   “It’s architecturally designed to encourage social interaction and build community, with parking on the periphery -- and the interior for pedestrians only,” says Huston. “The houses, five duplexes and one triplex, are built facing each other and the idea is that residents get and give support to their neighbors in a positive way and children are brought up with lots of adults in their lives.”

   The 1.3-acre project, started four years ago, ran into rough sledding from neighbors, who objected to parking, density, rezoning and other issues, causing it to be rejected last year by the city planning commission, but approved on appeal to the city council. Neighbors started, but dropped, an appeal to the State Land Use Board of Appeals.

   “It’s been four years of hard work but now I’m really excited about seeing it done and working,” says the project’s designer Melanie Mindlin, an original member who went on to live elsewhere. “It was hard for the neighbors to lose this nice, open field, but now one of them says she’s going to take down her fence and open her yard to the commons.”

   Framing and walls are now up on about a third of the homes, with hot water heating pipes visible in floors. Large windows face south to collect heat in solar masses, to be later distributed when the sun goes down.

   Members are acting as contractor on the project and their twice monthly meetings, where decisions are made by consensus (all must agree), rather than voting, serve as a testing grounds for who fits into the community mindset.

   “Some people value their privacy more than others, but to live here you have to be able to find that balance between privacy and community,” says Huston. “It’s a lot of work. You have to want to work with people. It’s all consensus, except what you eat, what you talk about and what you do with your kids.”

   Future resident Jan Jacobs says she sought out Ashland and the co-housing situation as part of her search for deeper community and sustainable living, with shared resources.

   “We have an intense membership process and people, if they leave, self-select out,” says Jacobs. “I’m very excited to see it come to life. It’s been a fantastic creative process.”

   There are 80 co-housing projects in the U.S., “all doing swimmingly” and 120 under construction, with “green living” and simplicity as major draws, notes Huston. Instead of a lawn mower and power drill in every garage, there’s one in common for the whole community, he says, a practice that lessens expenses and impact on the environment.

   While the long business meetings help people learn interaction, says resident Alfred Hardman, deeper challenges await when dealing with real situations around pets, children and the deepest fear – “what if I don’t get along with someone?”

   “It’s part of growing. It’s been hard for me at times already, but we’re in the early stages and we’re confident.”

   Resident Tonya Graham, a director of Headwaters, “In co-housing, we decided to create relationships and not avoid someone because you’re upset with them. I think we’ll find people are looking to solve problems. You can’t pretend conflicts don’t exist.”

   Graham studied co-housing in college, visited projects in Denmark and Sweden and resolved she would raise her children in “a wonderful relationship with neighbors, rather than a typical subdivision, where it’s too easy to drive in and not interact with neighbors, because the subdivision street takes up the center.”

   In a neighborhood that intentionally brings all generations together, says Huston, children will be exposed to lots of other adults who have knowledge and skills their parents don’t have – “plus you get a built-in babysitter, more physical safety, because its pedestrian-only and extended independent living for older people.”

   The Fordyce co-housing community is not all that different from the nearby Mountain Meadows retirement community, he notes. “It’s not communal. It’s a very American way of re-creating the neighborhood of the past, which had lots of intentional interaction. Sure, I’m concerned about how I’ll adjust to living in close quarters but I look forward to finding deep and lasting friendships and support for my two and four year olds.”   ~





Civil Liberties: Erosion of Freedoms After 9/11

   Often taken for granted or not well understood, America’s civil liberties have eroded during the post-911 war on terrorism, but the good thing is it’s brought our freedoms to public attention for discussion.

   That’s the “take” of three panelists who tonight will speak on the subject “What Price Security?” It’s at 7 p.m., Presbyterian Church, Siskiyou and Walker, Ashland, and is sponsored by the League of Women Voters.

   “The measures of Ashcroft-Bush-Cheney should be to protect us from terrorist attack, without excessive and unnecessary intrusion on civil liberties, but they’re not,” said Ralph Temple, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington D.C, 1966-80, and now living in Ashland.

   “What we’re seeing is not a calculated attempt to root out and uncover planned terrorist attacks,” said Temple, “but rather, from the beginning, a shoot-from-the-hip approach, driven by the notion of a roundup, indiscriminate blanket treatment, as in incarcerating 1,100 Arabs and Muslims, without due process and without finding a single terrorist among them.”

   The public perception of the USA-Patriot Act is that it’s used only to search and ferret data on aliens, that agents must show probable cause and that they have to convince a court for any searches, said Temple, “but none of this is true.” Agents, he added, are free to use the Act against any ordinary American at their discretion.

   Panelist and Ashland Municipal Judge Alan Dresher said the Act is being challenged now in federal court and will almost certainly be weighed in the Supreme Court. An ACLU cooperating attorney, Drescher said the Act likely will be found flawed on the 1st Amendment, freedom of speech, religion and association, the 4th Amendment, unreasonable search and seizure and the 5th Amendment, taking papers or property without due process.

   Ashland’s law proscribing local assistance to federal agents under the Act, probably would also be found wanting, as federal law supersedes local law, Drescher noted. A more appropriate course, he noted, would be a city ordinance requiring local police or officials to consult the city attorney before cooperating, then sue the federal government on grounds the Act is unconstitutional.

   Another panelist, Police Lt. Mike Bianca, said his department has not been asked to assist in any searches or information gathering under the Act.  However, he noted, Americans are too willing to surrender their liberties for a sense of security during crises or war.

   “We have real enemies who mean us harm,” Bianca said, “but I’m very much concerned about doing things like the detention of Japanese-Americans in World War II. I have people asking me to put surveillance cameras on Hostler Dam here but I don’t think we can protect against all terrorists. We should stop being afraid and just live our lives.”

   The Bush administration has “trampled” the Bill of Rights’ first eight amendments, Temple said, except the 2d Amendment, the right to keep and bear arms, because “(Attorney General John) Ashcroft loves guns.”

   Bush, he noted, has done a lot to erode civil liberties using executive orders, rather than legislation, including hold immigration hearings behind closed doors and without representation by counsel.

   “If anyone doesn’t have their rights in this country, no one has their rights,” he said.

   The thrust of intelligence agency work since 9/11, Temple said, has been to seek broad “snooping and spying” powers, rather than to focus on the watch list of actual suspected terrorists.

   “We’ve become the land of the frightened and the home of the spied upon,” he said.   ~






MoveOn: It’s Not About the Money
It’s the Community Doing Democracy

  It was like an old-fashioned political picnic, with lots of watermelon, stickers and buttons and an auction to raise money for MoveOnPAC – an event that doubled as a primer on the 2004 presidential race

   A couple hundred people turned out at Hidden Springs, picnicking, listening to live rock music and bidding princely sums for auction lots to raise $3,000 to $5,000 for MoveOn, an increasingly potent player in national politics.

   It will use the money – and millions more raised on the internet – mainly for Democrat John Kerry’s presidential race, said organizer Steve Coffman, with special attention to registering voters and getting out the vote.

   “Our agenda was to have a good time and not come from the perspective of bashing Bush,” said Onnolee Stevens. “We’re here to take back America and do it by focusing on parts of his agenda that we want to change.”

   To that end, public radio talk show host Jeff Golden auctioned off donated artwork, ceramics, dinners for six, resort lodging, jewelry, legal services and such, along with fanciful certificates attesting to the bearer’s support for church-state separation, repeal of the USA Patriot Act, campaign finance reform, public ownership of the airwaves and other issues.

   An imaginative cyber-force in politics, MoveOn formed during the impeachment of President Clinton to urge Congress to “censure and move on.” It raised $7 million for reelection of imperiled U.S. senators, contributed to environmental causes and sponsored a vote on the best 30-second tv spots, submitted for use against President Bush.

   Organizers focused on fun, food, music and socialness, so as to demonstrate “democracy in action, which means that money is not the big thing – it’s the community response,” said organizer Leslie Lanes.

   “People want a change in administration and direction and MoveOn represents that change,” she said.

   The food-family-fun approach was also intended to draw in young adults, who’ve been notably absent from mainstream politics, said Golden, and have told him they find it boring and in need of being reinvented as a celebratory process.

   Twenty-seven year old Kelly Shelstad agreed, noting, “It’s easy for my generation to get apathetic, because we want to get involved and make a lot of changes but we don’t know how and we don’t want to go protesting all the time. MoveOn makes it real easy. You feel like you’re doing something and it gives you hope.”
  
   Said Golden, “A lot of people in politics, including me when I ran (for county commissioner) have dreamed of taking that energy of young people who care about community and harnessing it somehow to stiff, old mainstream politics.”

   Cecil said MoveOn has “people coming off the shelves to participate who never did it before. I felt I was called this time to do something because this is the most important election of my life, with the safety and health of the human spirit at stake.”

   In a pre-auction talk to the crowd, Golden said tv ads have reached the saturation point, so spending more there will not net more votes. “Americans are jaded by the soft focus candidate shots with the flag waving in the background. It’s not working anymore. That’s why the focus now is on door-to-door canvassing and registration and reaching out to people who you know are not going to vote.”   ~








Steve Traisman:
Celebrating Life, Praying for Peace

Flanked by tipis [cq], drumming sessions and trinket booths, hundreds gathered here last evening to welcome the solstice and call for world peace and environmental balance.

   It’s the 4th annual World Peace and Prayer Day, an event staged at Wellsprings (the old Jackson Hot Springs) and worldwide all weekend and tracing its roots to the birth of a white buffalo calf in 1994, said organizer Steve Traisman, director of the Walk In Peace Foundation here.

   “We’re celebrating life and praying for peace, as we create a shift to restore the balance of life on this planet,” he said, as forty people chanted and held hands in a Loving Earth Circle. “We’re heal to heal the planet and ourselves with love.”

   At a town meeting kicking off the celebration Friday evening, lawyer Eric Sirotkin of Talent told laid-back, exotically dressed celebrants the concept of “Ubuntu,” that he learned working with Bishop Desmond Tutu in South Africa as a monitor on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

   “Ubuntu is the essence of our being human. It means we stop being victimized by learning that we live through our belonging to other people and not as an individual. We listen and in listening we create relationship.”

   Ubuntu is changing the world, he said, as is apparent in the growth of groups fostering dialog, reconciliation and conflict resolution, even among schoolchildren. “Support the humanity of anyone you view as an enemy,” urged Sirotkin, who practices law with the Professional Wellness Institute, which trains lawyers to integrate “humanity and healing” into their work.

   Jackson County Commission candidate John Hallett echoed the themes of “treating people fairly and with justice. You’ve got to keep fighting for what you believe is right and hope we have natural resources 50 years from now.”

   Democratic Congressional nominee Peter Buckley of Ashland told the gathering, “Our culture has been taken away from us and so has the idea of common good. We are moving in absolutely the wrong direction and we need to work and fight for the American traditions of justice, progress and democracy. I’m asking you to dream again.”

   Takelma tribe elder Agnes Pilgrim seconded the message, noting, “Being on this earth and trying to survive is political.”

   Jyme Waidler of Jacksonville said he attended the gathering because it was a communion of people celebrating the oneness of all members of the human race, regardless of background.

   “If everyone could feel this energy in their hearts, it would create instant peace and an end to all violence."

   Volunteer organizer Marla Welp, said she got involved – and created the event’s feathered “talking stick” – because “I was feeling frustrated with the state of the world and I wanted to act on my convictions that peace is possible.” The person holding the talking stick is enabled to address the whole gathering.

   The gathering continues 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday, Hwy 99 South, near the South Valley View intersection. It features over two dozen music groups, art, crafts, food, ceremony, storytelling, dancing and drumming.

   Admission is a sliding $5-20 fee. Swimming and limited camping are available.  Children’s activities include a parade, making peace flags and masks, puppet show and poetry reading.

   A healing dome features classes on inner peace, homeopathy, yoga, meditation, peace in the birth space, massage, vaccinations, fertility awareness and rites of passage.   ~








Tashi Choling: My Religion is Kindness

 It’s a place of peace, where over the past quarter-century, thousands of people have come to learn meditation and practice the Dalai Lama’s slogan, “my religion is kindness.”

   It’s the Tashi Choling Center for Buddhist Studies, a remote 65-acre sanctuary in the Colestine Valley that greets you with vast, rolling hills, studded by gold spires, sweeping red walls and giant, entrancing statues of Buddha and the Taras -- the female Buddhas.

   “It’s really unique, a jewel box. It’s his gift to Southern Oregon and to everyone,” says Philip Thomas, a guide, resident and dedicated Buddhist, describing the temple’s lama, Gyatrul Rinpoche, who fled Tibet in 1957, after the Chinese invasion all but destroyed the religion there.

   “I love it here,” said Rinpoche, 85, describing the temple as a place that helps satisfy Americans’ love of learning and knowledge. The dazzling temple, which houses his living quarters on the second floor, is a replica of many in Tibet and the Far East and serves the purpose, he notes, of helping overcome war, famine and suffering in the world.

   His translator and caretaker, Sangye Khandro, said Rinpoche, with the gift of the land, built the temple in 1982 “as a place to benefit people in every country, according to what we believe. It represents ultimate peace and happiness – and the pacification of war and disease.”

   While many have heard of Tashi Choling, few have visited – and the adherents try to be low-impact and low-profile, not getting on any tourist maps and opening only the garden of behemoth statuary and prayer wheels, 100 yards below the temple, to the general public. 

   Those interested in using the temple for meditation or attending classes may see contact numbers on its website, http://www.tashicholing.org/general_information.htm.

   The temple, in the main floor of the hillside structure, offers contrasts of great peace, the “tremendous energy” of the statues and a riot of red, gold, turquoise and many other unabashedly happy colors adorning thrones, altars, prayer wheels and walls packed with 13 centuries of sacred texts. 

   Facing meditators and students are a row of twice life-size statues, made by students from Tibet. They include the Buddha in lotus position with his hand pointing to the ground in his “earth teaching posture.”

   That’s when Buddha refuted his enemy Mara who chided the master 26 centuries ago that, even if he had found the truth, no one else knows it. Buddha put his hand on the ground and, noted Thomas, replied, “I call on the Earth to be my witness.”

   Next to him is the Great Boddisatva, which means one who has attained enlightenment, but, out of compassion, chooses to stick around on the material plane to help others.

   Then you find a rather stern, angry-looking fellow, Guru Rinpoche, regarded as the “second Buddha” – the one who is a warrior against evil deities and brought the religion to Tibet in the 8th century.

   Bare-breasted White Tara joins the pantheon as the Mother of All Buddhas, holding a flower representing compassion and the female aspect of enlightened nature, says Thomas.

   “Women like her,” he notes, “and they do practices with her.”

   At the far end is Dorja Sempe, a couple seeming engaged in seated, facing lovemaking, but representing “Diamond Mind,” the union of feminine wisdom and masculine “skillful means,” says Thomas, who fled his Hollywood production design career years ago to live at the temple.

   In the prayer garden below, a two-story Buddha is flanked by a huge White Tara on the left and Green Tara on the right, the latter representing liberation, as well as success in work.

   The walkway to the statues is lined with cylindrical prayer wheels, each filled with books of prayers. When you spin them, they are thought to send the prayers out into the world. Rows of prayer flags on the property, he adds, do the same.

   What’s it all about? Thomas says the goal is to purify oneself, to benefit self and others, to have a meaningful life and to discover in oneself the Buddha nature that all beings have.

   “It’s not about converting anyone to this religion. People, if they have the karma, will make the connection to Buddhism,” says Khandro. “Our guest books in the garden are filled with comments of people who come here from all over – Poland, Russia, New Zealand, Mexico – and say, of their whole trip, this was the most profound and peaceful experience.”   ~









Going to War in Iraq:
Explaining It to the Flock

  As never before since perhaps the Civil War, churches are full of preaching, singing, prayer and activism about our country going to war – and they’re not at all agreeing about whether the nation is on the right track and where God stands on it.

    Most are preaching to their congregations about peace, asking prayer (and sometimes work) to steer the U.S. toward exhaustion of all alternatives before venturing into what many see as a radical new policy – preemptive invasion – something that might bring unforeseen negative consequences.

   “I’m telling my congregation that we have to find a way to live in a peaceful world together,” said Rev. Paul Robinson, Medford congregational United Church of Christ. “We have to follow Jimmy Carter’s criteria – that we’ve exhausted all alternatives to war, that not acting is more dangerous than acting and that we not break the centuries-old precedent of how nations behave, by not attacking first.”

   Robinson sits on this Sunday’s third Ecumenical Community Forum, entitled “The Collapse of the Social System,” a survey of the social consequences of “turning our country to a military economy and losing our ability to provide basic social services,” said Robinson.

   Rev. Bill McDonald of Medford’s First United Methodist Church said he shared his views from the pulpit that “the case has not been adequately made for war, particularly a preemptive war – and in a time when people are coping with the “stretching of our social fabric” and 40 states are in deficit.

   “My understanding is that I, as a pastor, have the responsibility to faithfully share the gospel as it is intertwined with the social and political fabric,” McDonald said. “Its voices emerge not from a monastic community but from the streets and the nation. The gospel comes to life in the midst of personal and community life experience and can’t be divorced from it.”

   On the other end of the spectrum, Rev. William Comstock of Medford’s Justice Rd. Baptist Church, said God permits and leads people into war to “punish those that are evil and reject the Lord” and to “keep God before God’s people and show our dependency on him.”

   Added Comstock, “Iraq is definitely one of those nations that reject God. Any false god is a rejection of God. Allah is a false god and Islam is a man-made religion, not the religion of the Bible.”
  
   Almost all churchgoers are being asked to pray for peace and hold our troops and their families in their hearts, said Rev. Alicia Wolski of Medford’s First Christian Church. “We pray that God’s work be done and we also pray for people who have lost jobs because of the economy and are struggling.”

   Rev. Jack Duggan of Ashland Christian Fellowship said he finds himself on the fence between those who want peace and those who want the U.S. to stand by Israel, because she’s our ally and “biblically, that needs to be our position, too.”

   Ashland’s Unitarian-Universalist Church sent a fax signed by most members asking President Bush to honor the UN and weapons inspectors, lest “our country ignore world opinion and become despised and isolated,” said Rev. Pat Herdklotz, who also stands with the Women in Black protesting war.

   “I tell my congregation to make their voices heard, that silence is terribly powerful, that violence does not support civilization and we need to look for a different way to relate to one another and solve our dilemmas with dialog, negotiation, listening and offering our ideas and solutions.

   Church members are getting ready to offer counseling for conscientious objectors to any draft, Herdklotz said. Every Sunday the congregation has taken to singing Raghupati, a song praising the name of God in both Hindu and Muslim religions and made famous by Gandhi. Members have added God’s name in many other languages, too.

   St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Medford, has been using its Wednesday evening service over the past two years since 9/11 to “talk about our fears and concerns and to develop personal relationships,” said Fr. Charles Christopher. “We don’t have to go to war. We have to be careful who we are in the world and not assume we know better than everyone else.”

   McDonald echoed the sentiment. “The more powerful a people become, the more they have to be careful not to use it for their ends and the more they need to seek wisdom and live from compassion. The Christian ministry stands for helping people move from aggression toward forgiveness, love and reconciliation. That’s what we’re working for now.”   ~







The DaVinci Code: A Woman Stands With Jesus

  While 25 million readers may be absolutely thrilled with The Da Vinci Code, probably an equal number of Christians – including author Peter Jones -- consider it insidious, irrational nonsense that encourages modern “neo-Paganism” and undermines the faith.

   The wildly bestselling thriller by Dan Brown suggests scenarios that neo-Pagans find plausible – and which bash central doctrines of Christianity, says Jones, who speaks on his book “Cracking the DaVinci Code,” 9 to 2, Saturday at Medford’s Cornerstone Christian Church, 608 N. Bartlett. Cost is $25 today or $30 at the door, with $10 off for students.

   Among the more controversial ideas in the Brown novel are: that Jesus was married to Mary Magdelene and had children, that the Holy Grail was her womb, that Jesus was a human spiritual leader, not a divinity, that Roman Emperor Constantine at the 4th century Nicene Council, hid these facts because he needed a religion headed by a divine being, in order solidify his earthly rule – and that this information was found by Crusaders, who formed a society to keep it secret.

   While just fiction, the Brown novel, Jones said, in a phone interview that he wants to show there is “more going on in this book that a good, religious cops-and-robbers story.”

   Why? “Because Brown has touched a nerve in what’s happening to our culture, a major change in how people think, that they are rejecting religion and embracing spirituality.”

   What is “spirituality” – as the term is coming to be used in our society?  “It’s a sense of suspicion toward religious institutions, as something imposed on people. It’s a shift to “something highly personal,” says Jones. “People more and more are rejecting religions as revealed structures about the world – and are looking to spirituality as something they discover in themselves and for themselves – and Brown’s book gives the green light to this.”

   Stan Way, senior pastor at Cornerstone, agrees that organized religion, especially Christianity, is losing people to the “spiritual, but not religious” label, which he calls a subjective, post-modern movement.

   “This is people talking about ‘my truth’ and ‘your truth’ as being able to coexist – but no longer seeking THE truth,” said Way. “That (trend) is errant. It leads in the wrong direction. It makes the individual the measure of truth. Christianity is not compatible with that. Christianity is based on Biblical revelation that is considered universally true. It makes judgments on ideas, that they are either true or false.”

   Cornerstone parishioner Steve Rinkle, who has read Brown’s book, says its huge popularity has called traditional Christian doctrines into question, especially the divinity of Christ.

   “The book (presents) heresies faced by the church through history,” Rinkle says, “Christ’s divinity was an enormous issue and led to civil wars in the time of Constantine, setting the stage for the Nicene Council. There’s a lot of spiritual hunger going on now and that issue (Christ’s divinity) is very appealing to seekers.”

   The divinity of Jesus, says Way, is a core belief of Christianity – and any suggestion of mating with Magdelene denies that divinity and calls on the faithful to question the veracity of the Gospel.

   This has happened to one family in the congregation, he adds, whose daughter went off to college, read Brown’s book and others, causing her to “second guess what was taught to her in church and home.”

   Local, non-church members, after reading “The Da Vinci Code,” indicate they already classed themselves as “spiritual, not religious” – and that the novel enhanced that orientation, as well as increasing their appreciation of Christ as a spiritual leader.

   “I feel no different than before, though my eyes are more opened about the patriarchal bias of the Catholic Church and how it has suppressed the power and spirituality of women,” says Erin Page of Ashland. “It helped me cozy up more to Jesus and less to his disciples, who have given people so much to fear throughout history.”

   “I look on the Bible as written by men and interpreted over time,” says Krista Johnson of Ashland, who was raised Lutheran. “The Inquisition left a bad taste in my mouth, as far as what Christianity is capable of doing. I believe it (Brown’s book) has a lot of truth in it and it’s good to get a different perspective.”

   Jones acknowledges people may be “suspicious of religion for doing certain things,” but that post-modern seekers have taken an irrational path with “no overarching truth.”

   Jones said his book, which has sold 300,000 copies since publication a year ago, shows how Christianity has, from the beginning, faced such “spiritual notions” in the form of Gnosticism.

   “The Gnostic texts are the original expressions of what we see today – Jesus as a normal guy, a guru, but this hasn’t anything to do with the doctrines of the church,” says Jones. “The Gnostic texts were written in the mid-third century and there is no evidence they (the authors) knew anything about the original Jesus.”

   From the start, Christians considered Jesus divine and did not add that in at the Nicene Council, Jones says.

   “There are two world views here – neo-pagan and theistic. The theistic view is that God exists beyond the created cosmos and is the great force in all beings.”   ~






Ernestine Lee: Black, Female and
Leading a Church in Medford, Oregon

   It’s been a journey of extremes for Rev. Ernestine Lee – being enthusiastically called to be minister of Medford’s Unity Church, leading a flock in understanding God is inside us and then being the first black woman minister in Rogue history, a role so challenging it cost her her marriage.

   For the congregation, treating all people equally is big timber in the faith’s foundation – a group that sees Lee as “absolutely inspiring – a nice, warm, interesting and interested human being that you’d never know was a minister,” in the words of parishioner Bob Will of Medford.

   After being Unity minister in a diversely peopled church in Memphis for four years, Lee, 63, confessed to culture shock here -- looking out at all-white faces, “but I just said, ok, they can be black, white or polka-dotted, it’s all the same and they’re all people.”

   Lee’s husband faced a different situation as a black male in mostly white Medford, dealing with frequent police stops, known in civil rights work as “driving while black.” 

   “He said, I’m outta here and if you want to be married, come with me. I believed I was sent here by the Holy Spirit to do a job. It was very difficult. I chose to share it with my congregation. This is a spiritual family and in a family you don’t just talk about the good things, you talk about the hard things too. They supported me and loved me through it.”

   Through prejudice and other major challenges, including being told a back injury would keep her bed ridden all her life, Lee was led to faith and, after a long career as a registered nurse and teacher in her native Cleveland, to the vision at age 53 of entering the seminary.

   “It all goes back to childhood, when a butterfly, the age-old symbol of transformation, led me out of a burning house,” said Lee, whose office is festooned with the colorful creatures. “That was my first messenger from God. It allowed me to save my family and others in the house.”

   During prayer, in the depths of her health crisis, Lee heard her name called three times. “I got real quiet. I said, I wonder if that’s God. The voice was powerful and not frightening. It was not inside me, but clearly outside. I said, God, if that’s you, let me know.”

   Two weeks later, on a spiritual retreat and still waiting for a sign, Lee had a “life-changing moment – she saw a poster in an elevator, quoting Isiah, “I have called you by name and you are mine.”

   Lee had been attending Unity since the 1970s and sought ordination there because, “It’s a non-shame based belief that God is within me and everything is good. It’s metaphysically based. It looks for the deeper meaning and good of everything, so even if someone does negative, bad things, God is in that person and it’s all for a reason.”

   Lee got a chance to try it all out with an operating room supervisor who was “on me all the time.” Talking with her Unity minister, she was told God is within that supervisor. “I invented my ‘spiritual Geiger counter’ and visualized scanning her from head to toe but could not find God. I decided it must be in her big toe, which was covered by her shoes, so it was hard to see. It immediately changed my relationship with her. She didn’t change. My reaction changed. We established a base of communication.”

   When Unity here was shopping for a new minister three years ago, they asked Lee to serve fill-in duty, but after two sermons – “more like just talking,” said Will – the congregation said “hire her.”

   “Hopefully,” said Lee, “they saw the God in me, the energy and laughter that opens the heart and mind to God.”

   Since then, Lee has become involved in many community volunteer services, working with the Veteran’s Domiciliary, Salvation Army Shelter, McLoughlin Neighborhood Association (where the church is located) and the Summit Interfaith Community-- a gathering of Jewish, Buddhist, Religious Science and Unity ministers, hoping to branch out over time. As a woman, Lee said she is still barred from male-only prayer breakfasts of ministers here.

   When she preaches, Lee walks about the congregation with a cordless mic with the message that God loves them, “because so many people believe they can’t really be loved by God. I communicate that divinity is within us now, not just in the afterlife, and that we have the ability to do something about our lives here and now.”

   Because of its broad, non-doctrinal approach, many parishioners use Unity to augment another mainstream faith – “because they’re seeking and they feel a lack in their lives.”

   Margery Avery, 85, of Medford called Lee “one of the most evolved ministers in the Rogue Valley, but because her face is black, some people can’t relate and that’s very sad, but she always come through with her flag flying.”   ~







End Times: If All Else Fails,
We Can Hit ‘Game Over’

  With global crises centering around the Holy Land, some conservative churches are pointing to often hazy Bible passages and suggest the “End Times” are at hand.

   Others say: of course the world must end someday, but the Bible is metaphorical on these points, so focus on loving your neighbor for now.

   For those who think we might be in the “Final Days,” it goes like this: the “rapture,” said Rev. Jack Duggan of Ashland Christian Fellowship, is likely the next major event. That’s the removal or “catching away” of God’s faithful from the earth.

   “The way I read scripture, after the rapture, a Tribulation or ‘shaking of the earth’ will follow, lasting seven years,” said Duggan. “This is God bringing people to himself. Many will be saved but the majority will reject Christ. Then follows the Millennium, a thousand years of peace, in which the devil is bound and cast in a pit and Christ rules on earth. Following this there will be a new heaven and a new earth.”

  Although scripture says we “will not know the hour or the day,” we can get a clue to the coming of the end by the way people treat each other, Duggan said. “Man’s desire for sin will increase and his love will grow cold.” This, he added, is happening.

   Does the worsening Mideast crisis signal End Times? Not specifically, he noted, but the Bible does say that “God has blessed Israel, that the Jews are God’s people and that those who fight against Israel are fighting against God.”

   While a belief in End Times is associated with more conservative churches, not all feel that way. Rev. Curt Wine of Faith Tabernacle (Pentacostal) does not believe in the Rapture, noting it was unheard of in sermons 200 years ago.

   “It’s a divisive theory stemming from fear and the need for an escape clause,” he said. His views led to him being “cussed out by one guy who couldn’t handle it,” he said.

   Many Christians expected the End Times at the year 2000, Wine said, but when that didn’t happen, they began to say it might be in 100 or 1,000 more years. “A lot of people crunch their numbers, but only the Father knows when the end is.”

   After extensive study of End Times documents, Rev Tim Shields, Ashland Church of the Nazarene, changed his fundamentalist view and now feels apocalyptic scriptures had much relevance to ancient times, but not ours.

   “I call it crystal ball Christianity and I’m very disillusioned with it,” said Shields. “People launch into a whole bunch of crazy language and have gotten lost in a storm of wild predictions. Current events have always been used to bend scripture. In the period of 1750-1850, some 99 percent of bible colleges taught that the church would usher in the millennium and the world would be perfect. Then the Civil War and World War I put an end to that thinking.”

   The Millennium, Shields said, was a use of ancient numerology and means a time lasting forever. “We’re already in the Millennium and it started with Christ’s death and resurrection. The Millennium doesn’t mean everything (earthly) goes away. It means we’re here under the power of the Holy Spirit.”

   On the more liberal side of the church spectrum, Rev. Anne Bartlett of Ashland’s Trinity Episcopal Church, said there’s a growing sense that “God’s kingdom is breaking into the world now, but not in a conflagration of terror.”

   The Mideast crisis brings up predictions of End Times, but that happens “every time we have a major crisis, in which the worst of human beings comes out,” Bartlett said.

   Ministers seemed unanimous in belief in the second coming of Christ and that it would signal the “end of history” and the healing of creation as God’s Kingdom – not unlike life before sin, in the Garden of Eden.

   Thousands of websites brought up under an End Times search, carry language like this: “The Rapture, The Beasts', The False Prophet, The Four Horsemen -- There is a good chance you will personally witness these events! It is foretold that during the End-Times two-thirds of the five billion plus people on earth will die and Christ will return for the remaining Christians.”

   Eschewing such visions, Wine said Christ “comes every day for people and his message is that we’re supposed to love people the way he did – and do what we can for each other.”   ~







Interfaith Thanksgiving in Ashland -
a Tradition of Hope and Unity

   In a call for tolerance, peace and a respect for all religious traditions as spokes of the same wheel, some 200 people gathered for music, prayer and meditation at Ashland’s 23d annual Interfaith Thanksgiving Celebration.

   “I love this – it embodies the true spirit of Thanksgiving and gratitude,” said Annie Funkhausen of Ashland. I’m one of the unaffiliated people and I love to come together with all the traditions and see how we really speak the same language.”

   Gathered in a hall behind First Methodist Church, the crowd heard rousing Jewish songs from the Klezmer Band of Temple Emek Shalom, meditated on the Hindu “Loving Kindness Sutra” read by Maya Gayatri of Medford and heard Rich Lang of Southern Oregon University’s Omega House call on people look beyond the day’s news to hear the “untold story of people connecting with each other, the earth and the divine” in a “remarkable conversation.”

   The informal, upbeat and well-attended gathering has become a tradition for many people and their out-of-town holiday guests, as a warm-up for the big Thanksgiving meal and a kickoff of the holiday season, the day before Ashland’s huge Festival of Lights.

   It always begins with the singing of “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me” and ends in a big hand-holding circle, singing, “You are a circle, you are healing me, I am a circle, I am healing you, we are one.”

   Speaking for the Native American tradition, WillowSong De Tar reminded attendees they are “light bearers and way showers” who should heed the Wiccan creed “cause no harm,” while we “reach a hand back to those struggling up to us, to be a family.”

   Representing the Hindu tradition, Robin Noll and SwamiTay led the assembly in laughter-filled rounds of “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands” – substituting “She” and the names of many other deities, as randomly tossed out by the crowd.

   After telling a parable of a tiger who brought food daily to a crippled fox, Rev. Ruth Kirby of Living Truth Center in Central Point said the message is to emulate the tiger, not the fox – giving service to those in need, rather than waiting for God to meet all your needs.

   “There’s only one divine source. The life force is in each of us,” Kirby said. “We are never separate. We always have everything we need – and together are capable of creating heaven on earth.”

   Nothing the “sense of hollowness” to our “overcrowded lives” and the coldness of our hi-tech communications, Quaker elder Barbara Rosen said our deeper thoughts get us out of the “reality show” and into the real.

   Ashland’s new Unitarian minister, Heather Lynn Hanson said thankfulness, even if we’re not sure what we’re thankful for, helps us be more aware and alive “and feel the plentitude of all that is living brush against our heart.”

   She added, “We give thanks today for oneness which transcends all separation…faith without fanaticism – and may we be enlarged not by our fears by our hopes.”

   Chris Hince of Phoenix, praised the service for “bringing people together from all traditions and giving me a sense of community, because I don’t have a lot of family here.”

   Visiting from California, Edda Smith called the service “soul searching, a reminder that we’re all one and I hope I never forget it, because we can get so caught up in our emotions.”

   Taking pains not to leave any faith out, host minister Michael Powell offered thanks for the Pacific Northwest’s largest denomination, the un-affiliateds and mentioned that a planned Islamic minister had to cancel because of illness.

   When jokingly asked if there were anyone present representing devil-worshippers and cannibals, the crowd was silent, except for a boy about 10 years of age who gleefully shot his hand up in the air, bringing down the house.   ~









Bill Gabriel: Muslims are Still People

When the Sept. 11 attackers started being framed as “Islamic terrorists,” Ashland High School teacher Bill Gabriel dropped his European history unit and plunged into Middle Eastern studies, a journey that Tuesday took him and his global studies class for two hours of instruction in an Islamic mosque.

   “Forget Europe; this is timely and we have to catch the moment,” said Gabriel. “There’s a lot of Arab distrust of Europe and America and vice-versa, so let’s bridge the ignorance gap, let’s get out of the classroom and break the barriers down.”

   Laying about on pillows in a huge, darkened tent-mosque, students heard David Jalajel and Perouz Seda-Ghaty, both local Muslims, describe Islam as a religion of peace under the guidance of the same God found in Judaic and Christian religions.

   Terrorism, targeting of innocent civilians or any act of unprovoked war is condemned in Islam, Jalajel said.

   “The people who did this (Sept. 11 attacks) are a handful of freaks, like Rev. Jim Jones (leader of mass suicide in Guyana) was within Christianity, but much more dangerous because of the openness of our global village,” said Jalajel. “They have a sick, twisted concept of God.”

   “It’s sad to see the imprinting of this phrase ‘Muslim terrorist’ on our minds,” said Seda-Ghaty. “Don’t associate them with Islam. They are murdering cults and their crime against Islam is greater than I can tell you.”

   Islam reveres Adam, Moses and Jesus, as well as Mohammed, as prophets in its own scriptures, emphasizes free will in obeying the law of God, considers men and women equal and requires women to show only face and hands in public, so as to stress they are foremost spiritual and not sexual beings, Jalajel said.

   It allows the use of deadly force only if attacked and forbids carrying on war if the other side sues for peace, he added.

   Islam has Allah as the one and only God, with no divine children or sub-deities, doesn’t believe in original sin or the temptation of Eve and considers Satan a powerless being, who rejected God of his own free will, he told students.

   “I really liked it – the kindness and respect of it,” said student Camila Thorndike. “I definitely would like to attend a service. I thought Islamic women were treated as inferior beings, but it’s nice to hear their dress is for respect. I didn’t know anything about Islam or even if what Osama bin Ladin did was for his religion. I see he’s more of a cult now.”

   “Islam sounds really neat,” said student Jessica Haas.  “I have a better understanding that they don’t just hate everyone and that the attack was terrorism – not Islam,”

   “It clarified a lot for me and showed the truth behind the stereotypes and that terrorism has no real connection with Islam,” said student Peter Jensen.

   “I learned the similarities between Christianity, Islam and Judaism and that it takes a lot of dedication, compared to just going to church once a week,” said student Ashtyn Steele.

   “It was really interesting to hear how similar it was to other religions and how many (1.4 billion) Muslims there are. I respect it but I couldn’t follow the rules of Allah,” said Jennifer Hooper. “I knew it was just a few terrorists, not all Muslims (in the attacks) and I don’t think Muslims should be seen as murderers.”

   “It was interesting looking into a different culture,” said student Alex Kloeb. “As Christians in Ashland, we don’t get that commingling of cultures and religions. I’m sure I had misconceptions about Muslims as terrorists, but now I can see that it (al Qaeda speaking for Islam) is like someone shooting up a school and saying that’s the will of God.”

   The students peppered Seda-Ghaty and Jalajel with questions, ending on a light note about why the Judeo-Christian God had to rest on the seventh day of creation, but Allah did not. The answer: Allah has no limiting characteristics, such as tiredness.

   The global studies class will make field trips to experience the teachings of Judaism, Hindu, Buddhism, Taoism and other religions, as well as the cultures that surround them, Gabriel said.  ~







Bob Semes: Creating a
Center for Liberal-Minded Inquiry

Celebrating the end of its first year, the Jefferson Center for Religion and Philosophy has attracted 70 paying members, created two weekly salon discussion groups, opened an office and library in the old Ashland Armory, landed some big money grants and will hold its second Summer Institute – this one on the controversies of science vs. religion – next week.

   Framing itself as a safe space for “promoting critical thinking and intellectual honesty,” the Center dedicates itself to separating religion from both science and government in a society where “groups such as the religious right want to blur lines between religion and government,” going against what the Center’s namesake, Thomas Jefferson, warned about, said Center director Bob Semes, a retired professor and Episcopal priest.

   Despite a high public profile, including articles and radio shows, the liberal-minded Center has attracted no attacks from the right – but it has learned that the word “religion” in its title is a touchy one for liberals and probably will be dropped, Semes said.

   “We learned that a lot of people are interested in an alternative look at religion, a philosophy not connected with dogmatic, institutional forms, from which so many people are alienated,” said Semes. “Our members are seeking something intellectually challenging and rational, not emotional and supernatural.”

   The Center’s summer symposium, Aug. 4-6, is “Exploring the Borderlands: Science and Religion in the 21st Century. It’s at Ashland’s Unitarian Center, 4th and C Streets, with registration at www.thejeffcenter.org

   One salon member, Toni Milroy of Ashland, a retired brain researcher from University of California, said she has missed the “level of critical thinking” of her career and “the freedom of knowing a lot and having your own ideas. I read a lot and find thinking wonderful.”

   When one is committed to science, she added, “you’re very tolerant and you try to understand the other person’s point of view. You’re allowed to think whatever you want, but you have to prove it.”

   The Center’s salons are rich in professors and people with experience in the political process, she added, but virtually all of them “think Darwin was right” and would not want to see the creationist view taught in schools. 

   “We need to teach children to think critically and not take on everything they hear and believe it – that’s what science is all about,” she said.

   The Center’s board of directors is a mix of “mainstream liberal religions,” including Unitarian and Presbyterian, with a doctor, lawyer, botanist, physicist and English teacher, said board member and Islamic scholar Steve Scholl of Ashland.

   “The salons are pretty popular, picking topics from upcoming presenters and from the culture, such as the salons on ‘The Da Vinci Code’,” he said.

   Added Center member Roy Kindell, a Medford teacher, “The salons are important because they deal with questions of religion and philosophy that help guide our actions and put everyday discussions into perspective. It seems a liberal group. I’m a liberal so that’s very comfortable. It would be better, though, to have some conservative opinion.”

   The Center has brought in many speakers, prominent in their areas – Margaret Wertheim, author and broadcast personality in the area of science vs. religion; Alan Wallace, a Buddhist monk and scientist; Munawar Anees, a geneticist, Muslim and Nobel Peace Prize nominee; Matt Young, a physicist speaking against intelligent design; Taner Edis, a physcist and proponent of “accidental” creation; psychiatrist Alan Sanders and philosopher Timothy F. Murphy, speaking for the genetic origins of sexual orientation, and theologian Ted Peters on the science and ethics of stem cell research.   ~








Reb Zalman: Renewal & Walking with
Women, the Planet and Other Faiths

   The world’s religions can and must move toward a more inclusive faith – one that does not exclude or minimize women, nature and people of other faiths – while still honoring their own ethnic roots.

   This is the message of the legendary Rabbi Zalman Schacter-Shalomi, the prime mover over the last half century of the Jewish Renewal movement, a philosophy to be experienced in song, dance, prayer and “direct encounter with the divine.”

   Sponsored here by Havurah Shir Hadash, Schacter-Shalomi will lead services Friday and Saturday, culminating in an interfaith forum with Christian, Buddhist and New Age spiritual leaders Saturday evening at Ashland High School’s Mountain Ave. Theater. The events are sold out.

   All religions now face the task of working in harmony in the realms of peace, ecology and human relationships in ways that integrate people and reduce conflict, said Schacter-Shalomi in a phone interview from his Colorado home.

   “We are in trouble,” said Schacter-Shalomi, noting that, as a society, we are not dealing with our own people, as commanded by scripture, coming up with the good education, welfare and care for the ill and aged. 

   “So many people are in a trance of consumerism, not even thinking about it, but there is an awakening, more concern about healthier food, better environment and good relations with neighbors.”

   Schacter-Shalomi said that humanity, amid its evolutionary spurts, daily goes into contractions, where “we can get lost and it looks like we’re going down the tubes.” Oregon, as an example, he said, will pass progressive laws, such as death with dignity (assisted suicide) then ban gay marriage.

   “People want to tighten and backlash and take every word of the Bible literally. That’s a cramped response,” he said. “Another response might be, instead of dealing with symptoms, ask what are the causes of this, such as market forces pushing violence and sex devoid of love and commitment?”

   Rabbi David Zaslow of Havurah said Schacter-Shalomi represents the renewal of the Jewish faith in its ancient roots, where it was affiliated with nature and had a mystical tradition of personal involvement with the divine.

   “It’s not enough to serve and worship God,” said Zaslow. “Renewal is the understanding that God resides in every one of us as a direct experience of the divine, a direct encounter.”

   The services and rituals of Schacter-Shalomi, he noted, “culminate in a direct encounter with the divine that is a very ecstatic approach to Judaic ritual, with a lot of singing, dancing and prayer.”

   Havurah membership chairman Scott Banderoff said that, like many young Jews in the 1960s, he left Judaism to search for that personal divine connection, finding it in Native American religion – but Schacter-Shalomi brought him back.

   “He brought Judaism home for me,” said Banderoff. “It’s so meaningful. It’s an earth-based spirituality, with holidays around harvest and planting. It’s important to me because I have a strong connection to the earth and a lot of environmental awareness. We, as a culture, have strayed so far from that and it’s very important how we connect with nature.”
   According to the Havurah’s website, www.havurahshirhadash.org, “Jewish Renewal seeks to bring creativity, relevance, joy, and an all embracing awareness to spiritual practice, as a path to healing our hearts and finding balance and wholeness. Jewish renewal helps to heal the world by promoting justice, freedom, responsibility, caring for all life and the earth that sustains all life.”
   Schacter-Shalomi’s renewal teachings emphasize a “new cosmology and new paradigm,” said Zaslow, “that started exploding on the American scene with the baby boomers of the sixties, who wanted a new, innovative approach to spirituality and prayer.”

   Schacter-Shalomi departs from the traditional, rational approach of reciting scripture and prayer, Zaslow said, instead thriving in a space “where the ecstatic is let in to teach the heart.”

   Schacter-Shalomi has done retreats with many world spiritual leaders, including Catholic mystic Thomas Merton, the Dalai Lama (Tibetan Buddhism) and author-philosopher Jean Houston, now of Ashland.

   With Schacter-Shalomi on the Saturday night panel will be Houston, Rev. Anne Bartlett of Ashland’s Trinity Episcopal Church and, representing Ashland’s KSC Tibetan Buddhist community, Lamas Pema Clark and Yeshe Parke. ~







Eco-Evangelicals: Reckoning with
the Material World as Part of the Divine Plan

  Rarely will you hear the words “environment” and “evangelical” in the same breath. In religious circles, the earth is a liberal issue and evangelicals are conservative – or so it’s been thought until recently.

   But now, even the religious right has been getting alarmed about human impact on the natural world – and the National Association of Evangelicals has staked out a position against global warming and decided to roll up its sleeves and work for the cause alongside environmental groups on capitol hill.

   Has the issue – called “creation care” – seeped down to local pastors and their congregations? Not much. Few have heard of it and most still talk of the earthly world as a stage in the struggle for salvation and winning entry into the next world.

   “If the NAE wants to have creation care as a main concern, that’s great,” said Pastor Matthew Heverly of Applegate Christian Fellowship, “but our main concern here is to see people saved and to see the gospel ministered to people who haven’t heard of Jesus Christ or haven’t yet accepted him.”

   Local evangelical pastors, who guide their flocks by strict adherence to scripture, said the Bible does not specifically address being environmentally conscious, as it was not an issue two or three thousand years ago.

   However, said Pastor Chad McComas of Set Free Christian Fellowship in Medford, scripture does call on man to be a “good steward” of the environment and to “take care of the environment as best we can.”

   Said McComas, “I have to take care of what’s been given me. I believe in recycling everything we possibly can. A lot about our environment bothers me, even overwhelms me, such as the rain forest being destroyed. What I can do as a Christian is to be sensitive to environmental issues and vote accordingly.”

   Having lived in Brazil, Pastor Tim Shields of Rogue Valley Christian Church in Medford, said third world people show complete disregard for the natural world and have turned forests into deserts and rivers into sewers.

   “As a Christian, I’m definitely concerned for the environment and believe we are stewards of what we have,” said Shields. “God created intricate and working together and when we work against that, we destroy things.”

   The global warming issue began to get traction in Congress when NAE president Ted Haggard began promoting it following scuba diving trips, in which he saw the effects of ocean warming and pollution on coral reefs.

   While 80 percent of evangelicals voted for President Bush, an opponent of the Kyoto Treaty on mandatory emissions, Haggard feels NAE sentiment against global warming could change the political balance in Washington.

   “The question is, will evangelicals make a difference, and the answer is, The Senate thinks so,” Haggard said. “We do represent 30 million people, and we can mobilize them if we have to.”
   Environmental groups, traditionally seen as liberal and on the non-traditional end of the religious spectrum, seem to be welcoming evangelical support in Republican Washington.
   “They (evangelicals) have good friendships in places where the rest of the environmental community doesn't,” said Larry Schweiger, president of the National Wildlife Federation. “For instance, in legislative districts where there's a very conservative lawmaker who might not be predisposed to pay attention to what environmental groups might say, but may pay attention to what the local faith community is saying."

   The most conservative of evangelicals describe the earth as “fallen” and not deserving of the concern shown for heaven.

   “Personally, I think it (environmental action) is a waste of time,” said Rev. Wilbur Boatwright of the Upper Rogue Full Gospel Fellowship in Eagle Point. “If the Bible is true, we’re going to have the end of things as they are now. There will be World War III, starting in the Mideast, with major chaos worldwide. There’s going to be too many other issues to think about the environment. Still, we should try to take good care of everything God created.”

   Boatwright added that God would not let man destroy the earth – and that he, Boatwright, is “keeping my eye on the real enemy, the devil.”

   McComas said that, in his sermons he wouldn’t take a stand on anything environmental, as the Holy Spirit will tell people when it’s time to be more socially conscious.

   The Bible, Heverly noted, makes a few references that indicate God’s wish for humans to be good stewards of the natural world. The first chapter of Genesis shows God creating grass, fruit trees, fowl, whales, cattle, creeping things, beasts and finally man, who is in the image of God and who shall have dominion over everything.

   Another passage, Prov. 12.10, says, “A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast.”

   “That means we’re not supposed to pollute and burn tires – that’s ungodly,” said Heverly. “We’re supposed to care for creation. God cared enough to create it – streams and mountains – and we should take care of it. I recycle, drive a fuel-efficient vehicle and plant my own garden, but my primary concern is Jesus Christ.”

   As to whether Jesus would be an environmentalist, some, including Rev. Jim Ball of the Evangelical Environmental Network, believe he would. He created the campaign to place hybrid vehicles in an evangelical context – and the slogan, “What Would Jesus Drive?”

   Heveryly observed that many movements try to cloak themselves in the aura of Jesus and that can be presumptuous.

   Still, said Heverly, “I believe Jesus would be environmentally friendly. He walked everywhere when he could have ridden. But his main concern was not on social issues, but to save sinners.”
~








Isaac Skidmore: The Christianity
that Jesus Gave Us, Long Ago

   The service you experience at St. Gabriel’s Orthodox Church in Ashland – the chanted words, the censers, the gilded icons, the Eucharist (bread and wine) -- can trace itself back to the beginnings of Christendom, when it was part of the Western church.

   With the Great Schism from the Catholic church in 1054 A.D., the Eastern Orthodox flock took a different path, said Fr. Isaac Skidmore. They have no pope or privileged hierarchy, just Christ as their leader. Priests can marry, as Skidmore has done and, doctrinally, they look at Christ’s life and death not so much as redemption of humanity’s sinfulness, but rather that “God became man, so that we can become divine.”

   From this, humanity partakes of such divine qualities as eternity, communion, fellowship and wisdom, he said. “Our big difference with the Catholic church is in the atonement. In the West, they emphasize the punitive nature of the cross and the angry nature of God. In the East, God takes on all the conditions of human flesh, including death and humanity, so it (human nature) is not an obstacle, but a bridge to our communion with God.”

   The church here is only four years old, started by Fr. David Fox, who died the next year. Skidmore, a native of Tacoma, and his wife Vonna came here in 2000. He wears the long black cassock, but eschews the traditional beard and black hat.

   The atmosphere of services is “really different,” he said. “Everything’s chanted or sung, except the sermon itself, and the congregation will often respond with prayerful phrases. Some parts are fixed (heard every week) and other parts rotate with the season. The Nicene Creed of 323 A.D.   (“I believe in one God…”) is always read.

   The Creed is one of the reasons Orthodoxy went its own way. The Catholic church changed it to say the Holy Spirit issues forth from Christ, as well as from God, while Orthodoxy has eschewed any changes – hewing to the earliest known forms of Christian worship, including the original Nicene statement in which Holy Spirit issues from God only.

   Skidmore was drawn to Orthodoxy as a teenager. “It was organic. It struck me more as an organism than an institution,” he said. “It’s has a more cosmic dimension and is about giving love. The largeness of the universe is contained and expressed within this human event, this act of Christ giving himself in love.”

   Parishioner Maureen Phillips, Ashland, switched 10 years ago to Orthodox from a lifetime of Catholicism. “I looked a long time for something deeper, something closest to the composer’s intentions, something that hadn’t been adapted and watered down – and Orthodox was it.

   “It works on you from the inside out,” she said, following a set annual cycle of parables, saints, feasts and fasts through the year, she noted, and with each time round the cycle you go deeper into the understanding of it.

   “As one of our chants says, you lay aside all earthly cares when you come in. There’s a sense of a noble Christ as a friend and brother who comes down to our level, instead of reaching up to him.”

   Agafia Prince, raised Jewish, moved to Orthodoxy because “I felt the services were the way we should treat God – respectful, sober, but not somber, not hysterical. It’s full of music, which bypasses the intellect and goes beyond emotion.” Prince markets Othodox books and icons at Axios Books in Ashland.

   Owen Goldman, Medford, called his move to Orthodoxy an “emotional decision that just felt right.” He added, “I’m a historian and in my research, it dawned on me this was the original, oldest form. I was also impressed that it doesn’t engage in finger-pointing, threatening hell or saying it’s holier-than-thou or better than other religions.”

   Olga Klein of Ashland was raised in the Russian Orthodox Church and spent a long life in it, she said, helping found the Ashland church. “It has a lot of meaning for me. It stands for something. The sermons are very enlightening and I love the ritual. It’s very uplifting.”  ~







Mixing & Meshing Spiritual Paths:
A Problem or a New Freedom?

  Spiritually, as in most other ways, people in the Rogue Valley live “deliberately.” They’re not here by accident -- just sitting around trying to fit into the established pattern.

   So observes Fr. Isaac Skidmore of Ashland’s St. Nicholas Eastern Orthodox Church. The Rogue Valley is a rich smorgasbord of religious offerings and we like to sample the array. 

   “It’s like pop psychology. It borders on pop spirituality. You fabricate what you want, pick and choose, steer through options,” said Skidmore. “It can feed into a subtle form of self-centeredness. You might use the language of enlightenment but you’re staying in your own parameters and failing to transcend yourself. The goal should be to reach out and discover others and The Other – God.”

   Rabbi David Zaslow of Ashland’s Havurah Shir Hadash, sees it too. “It’s a reaction to the spiritual parochialism of the last century. I think spiritual shopping is great. We call them Bu-Jews or Su-Jews (Buddhist-Jews, Sufi-Jews) but at some point you have to buy.”

   “People make the circuit, seeking to feed their spiritual hungers,” said Rev. Caren [cq] Caldwell of Ashland’s Congregational Church. “They want the quick fix and they stay as long as they feel they’re getting something out of it. But what works and what builds community is to show up and stay.”

   “People are searching,” said Rev. Ron Timen of Rivergate, a Pentacostal, charismatic church in Ashland. “We want to have our lives mean something, A lot of people are going from one religion to another. It’s a quest and sometimes it takes in drugs, psychology and many types of spirituality. It usually takes a spiritual crisis to make something happen.”

   For many, that spiritual crisis is the present sudden shift if the world situation – terrorism, war, declining economy, deficits, joblessness and the crippling of education and basic state services.

   “This particular time is more intense,” said Timen. “Any time war looms on the horizon and we realize we can be snuffed out by nuclear weapons, then our mortality is staring us in the face and we say – ok, what’s it all about?”

   At times like these, the people of the Rogue Valley get back to their roots. Rev. Steve Bright of Ashland Christian Fellowship said attendance tripled during both Desert Storm and 9/11.

   “People look for an anchor,” said Bright. “There’s becoming a huge contrast between the negative, evil, dark side, whether it’s corporate corruption or bin Ladin, and our powerlessness to do anything about it. There’s so much dysfunction in the family and the world that we need something to give us hope, and know that something good is going to happen. There is a grace of God needed, that pours down on people, so you can rest while the world goes crazy.”

   As Rogue Valley churches look out on the rapidly changing world of the 21st century, the more conservative ones tend to use religion as “social glue” while the more liberal ones use it as a “social challenge,” said Caldwell.

   “We’ve got to realize we share the world with all kinds of cultures and we’ve all got to learn about each other and get along,” said Caldwell. “The traditional churches of the past were all about social glue but now the liberal and mainstream churches here provide leadership for a tolerant and creative community and for social justice and peace, as we’re seeing here in our call to consider the consequences of making war on Iraq.”   ~









Deciphering Mel Gibson’s
“The Passion” -- Feels Good But Is it?

   While many religious leaders accuse it of anti-Semitism, Mel Gibson’s “The Passion,” a new movie about the crucifixion of Jesus is inspiring most local clergy to use the controversy as a call to “stir up love, not hatred.”

   One, the Bear Creek Church of Medford, is running a half-page ad in the Mail Tribune, written a “Jew for Jesus,” calling for an end to the “blame game” against Jews and reminding readers that Christ’s death was foreordained by himself and God.

   The film, tracing the last hours of Christ’s life and based literally on New Testament accounts, has been attacked by Jews for pointing the finger at Jewish high priests who conspired to have him arrested and crucified.

   “The hatred and persecution we’ve endured as a result is tragic, and that’s made some Jews very defensive when it comes to the subject of the Passion,” wrote Susan Perlman of Jews for Jesus in San Francisco. The ad also suggests Christ was the divine messiah predicted in the Hebrew scriptures.

   The ad was paid for by a group of Rogue Valley business people and the Bear Creek Church of Medford, “a non-denominational fellowship,” said its pastor, Dale Meador.

   “If we just focus on who was responsible for the crucifixion, we miss the point – that he came as the savior of both Jew and Gentile,” said Meador. “We ran the ad to remind people that Christ’s life, death and resurrection were anticipated in the Hebrew scriptures.”

   Meador added that some people will react to the film with “renewed enmity” toward Jews but that he hopes instead that the dialog will help people see Jews have been “unjustly blamed” for the crucifixion.

   Rev. Bill Larsen of Lozier Lane Baptist Church in Medford that, since it’s strictly based on scripture, the film is “as close to the real story as you can get.”  He said, “I don’t blame all Jews, but the Jewish religious leaders of the time are the ones who insisted on the crucifixion and did everything they could to have the Romans carry out the execution, because they felt he was a phony” – not the prophesized messiah.

   Rev. Caren Caldwell of Ashland United Congregational Church disagreed, noting the New Testament Gospels describing the crucifixion were written decades after the event by people who weren’t there.

   “The Jews had no authority under Roman rule to execute anyone,” said Caldwell. “It was a Roman-style execution of a Jew. The Jews bear absolutely no blame for it. The idea is ridiculous. Using the Bible as an excuse to cause Jews persecution and suffering is absolutely unjust.”

   Assisting Priest Harvey Ray of Ashland’s Trinity Episcopal Church said, “The Jews bear no more responsibility than anyone else. It’s humanity that does this. We will always try to kill God if given a chance. Why? Because we want God to be in our image, not us in his. We want to be in control and have our way. It’s humanity’s desire to not want God to be what he is, which is inside us and in all creation.”

   After a screening of the film to religious leaders, director Gibson was reported to have cut the most objectionable scenes, which portrayed Jewish complicity in the crucifixion. Due to be released Feb. 20, the picture was said in a New Yorker article to feature “relentless violence.”

   Rabbi David Zaslow of Havurah Shir Hadash in Ashland called for viewing the crucifixion at a “higher level” in which the death of Jesus was caused by all humanity, since he “died for everyone.”

   The Roman occupation of the Near East was a tragedy for Jews and resulted in the crucifixion of 50,000 of them, including Jesus, he noted, “so blaming Jews for the crucifixion is like blaming Jews for the Holocaust.”

   The film, he added, has the potential to open or to heal old wounds but will certainly open up a dialog that can serve noble ends.

   Rabbi Marc Sirinsky of Temple Emek Shalom in Ashland said, “There’s been plenty of pain about this subject and it’s time to turn to compassion. Maybe this generation will get it right. We have a choice (in response to the film) to use it to stir up hatred or to stir up love and I’d always rather stir up love.”   ~







Ron Kurtz: Hakomi, the Path of Gentle Healing

Having made his Hakomi “body-centreed psychotherapy” into a simple and accessible form over the past four decades, Ron Kurtz has decided, after a June heart attack, to come home, open a center here and focus on training trainers.

   Kurtz, 76, has often presented workshops around the world but wants to “slow down,” organize the library of his lectures and workshops and offer trainings, both for the public and professionals on Hakomi, which he called “applied Buddhism,” because of its emphasis on gentle mindfulness, nonviolence, honesty and the oneness of mind and body.

   Kurtz compiled his teachings in his 1990 book, “Body-Centered Psychotherapy” and will announce the opening of the Ron Kurtz Center and review his methods with a talk and Hakomi session videos at 7 p.m., Thursday, Dec. 2 at Havurah Shir Hadash, 185 N. Mountain Ave., Ashland. Suggested fee is $10 to $20.

   Hakomi, a Hopi word for “who are you?” de-empahsizes the verbal techniques of traditional psychology, said Kurtz, instead “using mindfulness, with little experiments to evoke memories, so that old painful memories arise to heal and modify in healthy ways.

   “You watch your (past) experiences go by and I’ll say something to evoke memories, which get re-consolidated and remembered differently, with a new belief system and set on the path to healing.”

   His talk at Havurah, he notes, is intended “to inspire people to see what’s possible and that it doesn’t have to take 10 years and a lot of conversation, if you have the courage to do it,” said Kurtz, adding that the Hakomi therapist always acts with “loving presence.”

   While Hakomi seeks to heal the individual, Kurtz, looking back over a work begun in the 1970s, says all such healing and consciousness-raising must aim at a bigger target because, “We’re at the end of the road where greed has led us and, as the Buddhist mantra says, all is impermanent and without a separate self.”

   Western society suffers from development of a separate self that competes with others and minimizes caring, putting us in need, if we are to avoid “going in the tank,” of having “to wake up, change our evil ways...and reduce the enormous suffering that’s going on in the world unnecessarily.”

   Using Marina McDonald, executive director of his center, as a subject, Kurtz demonstrates how her simple habit of twirling a strand of hair has emotional content from childhood, when she started doing it “to feel like I’m here” -- a counter to being left alone a lot.  Fellow trainees supply positive, new sentences, such as “we’re here with you,” resulting in moving and healing changes and understandings.

   McDonald, who gave up a career as a high-end furniture designer to live in Ashland and train as a Hakomi therapist, says Kurtz has taught trainers to be in “a state of loving presence, so critical in these challenging times, when we really need to become human beings...and I’ve never seen anything as powerful...It’s absolutely magical.”

   Kurtz explains that he teaches trainers the Buddhist tenents of compassion -- being “radically present,” finding something to love in clients and being aware that all aspects of what’s happening in front of you are behaviors with roots in the original pain and wounding.

   “Neurological research shows the brain (of the therapist) can be turned to verbal or to much wider things,” he says. “Insights happen when you stop thinking. Radical presence happens when you stop being overly focused on the problem and its history. The behavior is the result of the problem and it’s right in front of you.”

   Although many Westerners seek inner peace from Buddhism, Kurtz notes it’s difficult for them unless they resolve long-standing emotional problems -- and that Hakomi helps with that shift.

   Kurtz, a native of Brooklyn educated at University of Indiana, has taught at Esalen at Big Sur, Calif., and learned from many psychology pioneers there in early days.    ~








Pauline Killough: Walking
the Path of Anne Frank

   There’s a good reason that, when Pauline Killough of Medford heard the bombs in Sunday’s performance of “The Diary of Anne Frank,” she jumped in her seat – and cried frequently through the play.

   As a girl of seven, Killough, like many Jews in Poland, fled the Nazis. Bombed out of their home in Bilgoraj in 1939, she and her family began a trek through hell, starving, freezing, hiding and trying to scratch out a living in Russia – where Jews historically have been the victims of considerable persecution.

   “The play was very upsetting and exhausting,” said Killough, 73. “I don’t normally watch anything about war, bombs or tanks. It’s all too fresh in my memory. It never leaves you. What I hope is that my grandchildren don’t have to go through what I went through, the discrimination over religion.”

   The play, produced at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, catalyzed a post-show panel where Killough brought home the realities of genocide before the congregations of Ashland’s Temple Emek Shalom and First Presbyterian Church.

   On the panel with Killough were Catherine E. Coulson, who played in “Anne Frank” and Judith Rosen, dramaturg for the play and head of Jackson County Sexual Assault Response Team. All are members of Temple Emek Shalom.

   With America’s “national myth of optimism and shiny new cars,” it’s important for us to hear stories like Killough’s, said Rosen. “We have to understand how lucky we are – and we have to realize how close this (the stories of Frank and Killough) are to us.”

   Like the play, Killough’s story served to personalize the Holocaust for people 60 years later, said Coulson.

   “She was about three years younger than Anne Frank. She could have been Anne Frank – and I was so amazingly moved and uplifted by her story,” said Coulson. “It’s the idea that we will prevail. The Jewish people will survive – and the more she can impact people, the more her travail and journey will have been worthwhile.”

   The play, based on teenager Anne Frank’s years spent hiding from Hitler with her family, is important to watch, Killough noted, because many people think the Holocaust never happened – and many believe it could never happen again.

   After much Nazi bombing, Rosen’s town was burned by Poles to deprive its resources to the German Army, she said. Russians, battling the Germans, told inhabitants that German forces would soon occupy the region and send Jews to death camps, so they fled east and lived a few years near Kiev, where her parents worked and she and her two sisters went to school.

   In 1942, however, the German army invaded Russia and the family for three years again became refugees, working on Soviet collective farms, grubbing menial jobs, hitching rides in boxcars, living in railway stations and, because they had no identification papers, being interrogated many times by KGB agents.

   “We were on trains for months, in rags, freezing. We’d find work in one place and it would run out and we’d move on. We were cold, scared, hungry and had lice, with no baths for months on end.”

   Killough remembers some things – having a swollen stomach from hunger, rounding up geese from the pasture, picking up cow chips to burn – and feeling bullets (from combat) whizzing by them as they lived in the forest.

   As the Germans advanced, Pescha Bitterman (her name then) and her family fled to Siberia, where the girls got trained as welders and found work in that field.

   After the Nazis surrendered in April 1945, the family struggled back to Poland and were soon put in an American camp for dislocated Jews in Austria. Her older sister, Sonja was put in an arranged marriage, the custom then, with a man whose wife and baby were killed by Germans.

   “They were in hiding in a bunker (in Poland) and the wife was afraid the baby’s crying would give them away, so she came up out of the bunker,” said Killough. “They were taken by the Germans and killed. The (Gentile) Poles would turn them in. The Poles had no love for the Jews, ever.”

   Killough went to school in the Austrian camp till 1949, when she and her family, after many medical and bureaucratic obstacles, were able to emigrate and join relatives in the U.S. Her parents’ health was broken, so she supported the family by working in a necktie factory.

   Killough, then only 17, worked hard on getting rid of her accent and learned to hide the fact she was Jewish, she said. But the scars of war fade slowly, if ever.

   “You’ll never find me without the doors locked,” said Killough. “When I put the menorah candles in the window at Chanukah, I’m apprehensive about what could happen. I still experience fear. I hope it goes away before I die.”

   But, even though America fought to liberate Europe from the Nazi scourge, Killough has had moments where Americans, when they learned she was a Jew, turned away. When her story was printed eight years ago in a newspaper in Port Angeles, Washington, where they lived, several friends, who didn’t know she was Jewish, “never spoke to me again.”

   But the hiding is over. Killough doesn’t ask others what their religion is – and doesn’t expect to be asked hers. If it comes up, however, she will tolerate no slurs of Jews and will claim the fact she is Jewish.

   “I’ve earned it,” she laughed.   ~








Bob Morse: Speaking From Your Own Connection With God, Even If That’s Silence

   Ashland Quakers sit in long, contemplative silences with no pastor leading them, no songs, no sermons. Occasionally, a “Friend” will feel moved to speak.

   This past Sunday, one person spoke, reminding Friends that a relationship with God takes little time, but occupies all your time. After an hour, the nearby University chimes announced the end of the hour and all broke into friendly conversation and announcements.

   “It’ the vision of (Quaker founder) George Fox that you sit in an expectant waiting to be connected with God,” said Bob Morse of Ashland, who is serving as the “clerk” of South Mountain Friends Meeting.

   “Each person has their own connection with Spirit – and we all have a corporate connection with Spirit, so it’s more akin to a group meditation,” said Morse. “At times, an individual will feel engaged in an inner dialog with Spirit and will be led to speak out for a short period, a few minutes, and if others speak, it won’t be in response to that but from their own connection with God.”

   Member Andra Hollenbeck of Ashland called the silence “very relaxing and rejuvenating and a challenge to bring this into my busy life.”

   At South Mountain Friends, Hollenbeck said the absence of doctrine and pastor encourages her to think for herself, “so everyone can contribute their own understanding of truth and this leads to a more genuine truth.”

   She added, “The truth I find is that life is kind of messy and that people experience a lot of different ideas – so there’s a lot of beauty in that messiness. I can find that inner place and find an anchor there.”

   Ashland Friends consider themselves of the “unprogrammed” (no minister or doctrine) and “universalist” wing (“Where all the worlds religions come together”) of the Quaker faith, rather than the “Christocentric” wing, said Morse. “It produces an ongoing sense of revelation.”

   The silence helps Friends “let go of the outer world so we have clear guidance and a profound sense of centeredness, connection and community.”

   Monthly meetings are conducted in thoughtful, receptive silence until members reach unanimity and “decisions are Spirit-based,” Morse said.

   Ashland Quakers engage in the old tradition of “queries” once a month, again seeking answers in silence to such questions as these, found on Quaker websites:

--How do Friends care for one another?
--Are you conscientious in fulfilling all obligations of state and society that are not contrary to the leading of God?
--What are you doing to understand and remove the causes of war and develop the conditions and institutions of peace?

   Queries help Quakers put faith in practice, said Morse. “Faith and practice are inseparable. Faith seeks to apply traditional Quaker principles of peace, simplicity, equality and community in our personal lives and in the wider world.”

   He cited Quaker historian Howard Brinton’s maxim, “for faith, the most important consideration is not right action in itself, but a right inward state out of which the right action will arise.”   ~








James Twyman:
Tracing the Path of St Francis for Peace

   Some believe loud protests and political action will bring peace. That’s not the case with seven Ashland-Talent residents who in September will re-enact the peace walk of St. Francis of Assisi eight centuries ago – as he appealed to the Pope to change humanity’s ways and bring about a more just and peaceful world.

   The seven – members of James Twyman’s non-denominational Beloved Community here – will carry 140,000 signatures 110 miles to Pope Benedict XVI in Rome, asking that he, as the leader of the largest religious group in the world, use his position to work for world peace in the tradition of his predecessor.

   The walk is not a protest against the Iraq War, they noted, but rather in support of the search for truth, balance, love, compassion, grace, joy and peace toward a goal of “unity of all,” according to their mission statement.

   “It’s a peace walk. We’ll be walking and singing, not preaching,” said Kim Keller, administrator of the Beloved Community which trains peace workers here. The eight-day march culminates in an audience with the Pope Sept. 21.

   Twyman and members of the Beloved Community eschew political action, believing that the “high vibrational field of peace” in the individual person radiates out to all people and will balance the traditional masculine energy of power with the newly blooming feminine energy of love, said Keller.

   “I’m doing the walk because I believe what I do creates a world the way I want it,” said Keller.

   She, Twyman and five other locals “received the call from spirit” to do the peace walk. Some are paying their own way and others are gathering pledges.

   Twyman, organizer of the march, began his career as the “peace troubadour” two decades ago, composing and performing songs based on the prayers for peace of 12 religious leaders called to Assisi in 1986 by Pope John Paul II.

   Twyman wrote the popular “Emissary of Light” and other books, as well as the movie “Indigo,” about a new wave of gifted, peace-loving children in the world. 

   The walk is modeled on St. Francis’ similar act, which also came at a time of great transition out of a dark age and into a renaissance, a return to “the basic principles of life,” Twyman said.

   “The world is ready, not that it won’t get darker before the light. Big paradigm shifts are like that, not sudden,” said Twyman. “Humanity stands at a point of decision about whether to continue the path of competitive and closed-minded energies or move into a more cooperative, open, peaceful time.”

   The marchers will be joined in their papal audience by Chris Deckker, founder of another peace organization, Peacedance, to present the hoped-for 140,000 signatures gathered on the internet. Peacedance is coordinating a round-the-world series of dances for peace the same week. It will be taken back to Assisi, where a United Nations group is holding a conference on peace.

   The petition says, “We, the people of planet Earth, In recognition of the interconnectedness of all life and the importance of the balance of nature, hereby acknowledge our interdependence and affirm our dedication to life-serving environmental stewardship, the fulfillment of universal human needs worldwide,
economic and social well-being, and a culture of peace and nonviolence, to insure a sustainable and harmonious world for present and future generations.”

   Backers seek 144,000 signatures because the number 144 is a sacred set in many religions, including Hopi and Hindu – and is the square of a dozen, the number of Jesus’ disciples.

   Psychotherapist Nitya Richmond of Talent said she and other walkers bring their “peaceful intent, individually and collectively, through the voice of the Divine Feminine,” which is not about gender, but about the spirit of unconditional love “that has been silent for millennia.”

   The march will be supported by members of Beloved Community around the world, who will walk in their communities, including Ashland, said Sharon Williams, who is organizing events here.

    “The march has the energy of love, which has been dominated by the energy of power the last 2,000 years,” said Williams. “Power without love is destructive. Love without power can’t get energy to move. We’re moving out of the age of power domination and into balance.”

   Using a line from John Lennon’s “Imagine,” Williams noted, “You can say that I’m a dreamer, but we create our own reality and I’d rather help this dream than live in the nightmare most people get from the media.”

   Richmond said the march follows the core dictum of most religions, that love conquers all because there is no higher vibration than love. It dissolves all anger and hatred.”   ~







The Death of Rachael Corrie

   Craig and Cindy Corrie never expected the Mideast crisis to take center stage in their lives, but since the death of their daughter Rachel three years ago – hit by an Israeli bulldozer while protesting in Gaza -- they’ve started a foundation in her honor to fund projects for peace, toured and established working relationships among Israelis and Palestinians and they go on extensive speaking tours, including one this evening in Ashland.

   The Corries, of Olympia, Wash., will speak at 7 p.m., tonight [Thu], the First Presbyterian Church, Siskiyou at Walker, Ashland. Their message, although they say the don’t take sides, is to “end the illegal Israeli occupation and to bring freedom, justice, and a secure peace to these two peoples.” 

   While not pretending to have the answer to Mideast peace, the Corries, in a phone interview, said that Americans are well exposed to the “Israeli narrative” and need to hear, said Cindy Corrie, “what is happening to the Palestine we know, how they’ve lost their land and hope, what life is like under occupation for 40 years, the impact of that kind of life, being squeezed by that experience. It’s devastating for them.”

   As the internet shows, controversy still rages over whether Rachel was intentionally run over and killed by Israel Defense Forces or was the victim of an accident at the hands of a driver who couldn’t see her from the narrow windows of his armored earth mover.

   The Corries reject the Israeli government’s inquest, which found it an accident, and they are suing the government of Israel as well as Caterpillar, Inc. They claim the corporation, in effect, is making equipment used in human rights abuses and that the U.S. supports this with aid to Israel.

   Stopping short of saying their daughter’s death was an intentional killing, the Corries, said in a statement, “We are asking for a thorough, credible and transparent investigation, as promised by Prime Minister Sharon to President Bush and we have not gotten that. We need answers.”

   Local Jews take a different view. Rabbi David Zaslow of Temple Emek Shalom in Ashland said, “The incident that killed Rachel Corrie was a terrible tragedy, and certainly has been proven to have been an accident. Israel has lost many wonderful women named Rachel who also died while trying to live peaceful lives by the hand of terrorists. In the memory of all these Rachels, Israel is working hard to find a way to peace with Palestinians.”

   Gary Acheatel of Ashland, co-founder of Advocates for Israel, took out newspaper ads here saying that eight Israelis named Rachael have been killed by “radical Palestinian terrorists.”

   The Corrie presentation is a “staged propaganda event that speaks of the tragic killing of Rachel Corrie as murder, when in fact it was an accident,” Acheatel said in an interview. “Constant propaganda like this suggests Israel targets civilians, when the opposite is true.”

   The Corries work, said Rachel’s aunt, Bonnie Brodersen of Ashland, is “to carry on the work that Rachel started, to stand for the Palestinian people and to educate Americans on what the occupation is doing to their lives.”

   Rachel Corrie, 23 at her death, graduated from Evergreen State College in Olympia, did work in the labor and environmental movements, lived with a poor family in Russia, then joined the International Solidarity Movement, which took her to Rafah, Gaza, near the Egyptian border, to do nonviolent “direct action protests” against destruction of Palestinian homes and water sources, said Brodersen.

   Asked if they were taking sides in the Israel-Palestine conflict, Cindy Corrie said the couple works for peace with many people and organizations from both sides, in the U.S. and Mideast and “We’re on everyone’s side.”

   “The side of the people,” added Craig Corrie.

   Added Brodersen, “Rachel wasn’t pro-Palestinian. She had many Israeli friends and had worked with the Jewish Voice for Peace in California. She cared about justice for poor people. It came from living with that poor family in Russia. They lived mostly on cabbage. That opened her eyes.”

   However, Acheatel branded ISM “a radical Palestinian organization” that “sucked Rachel in.”

   His website, www.advocatesforIsrael.org says Advocates for Israel was created to counter “sometimes subtle, sometimes virulent anti-Zionism” by taking action locally. It lists founders as Gerry Mandel, Stan Shulster, Acheatel and Zaslow, all of Ashland. Acheatel said similar groups have started around the U.S.

   While he has sympathy for her family and views the death as a tragic loss, Acheatel said his group’s actions will “hopefully inspire people to research the facts of an extremely difficult situation.”

   Acheatel said newspapers that publish stories about the Corries before their speaking events are giving them thousands of dollars of free publicity and, in letting the Corries suggest Rachel’s death was murder, are “complicit” in “propaganda.”

   Cindy Corrie noted, “The bottom line for me is if we want the world to change and if we want the rest of the world to look more favorably on us (Americans), children have to have their freedom and human rights respected. We must want that everywhere.”

   The Corries said many Jews attend their presentation – some supportive, some not.

   Zaslow observed, “Peace work in any form is crucial, especially for those of us who believe in a secure Israel and the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people for a homeland. A very high majority of Israeli people would like to see that, as long as it’s tied to a secure Israel.”

   It’s clear, he added, that “Rachel’s tragic death was grieved for by most Israeli and American Jews. It was horrible and was also shown to be a terrible accident. The government of Israel just doesn’t take down protesters.”

   In a news conference after tours and meetings in Israeli and Palestinian areas earlier this year, the Corries held a news conference, saying, “We were struck by the terrible tragedy of the occupation: the irony of a people who have suffered so much, now causing suffering in so many others, the massive effort in manpower and expense demanded in maintaining the occupation, the desperate and horrifying strategy of suicide bombings used to violently oppose it, the fear both of Palestinians sleeping in their homes in Rafah and Israelis riding on their buses in Jerusalem.  And always the pain that we all share so deeply.”    

   Rachel’s death was “devastating” for her family and kin, “very hard on the younger cousins, especially,” said Brodersen. “It made us all involved  But Rachel would be “shocked and horrified at her fame.”

   Before the tragedy, said Cindy Corrie, the Mideast was “a little buzz I didn’t pay much attention to. I would read stories about the Holocaust to my kids and my natural allegiance was with the people of Israel.  Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I would be so personally affected by it. It transformed our lives. From that moment, we live one step at a time.”

   She added, “We know our message is threatening to some people, but we need to open up. People need to understand the U.S. role in what’s happening and the urgency of how it’s tied to our future.”

   A centerpiece of the Rachel Corrie Foundation is her writings – emails, journal and college papers – printed extensively in the Guardian of London and made into a play, “My Name is Rachel Corrie,” much along the lines of “The Diary of Anne Frank” – and including cameos of her childhood. It was produced in London by the Royal Court Theater – and they will stage it in New York next month.

   Her mother added that the sometimes-made comparison to Anne Frank is valid in “their common humanity” and that “they both had no idea the impact they would make on people who came after them.”  ~











Rich Lang: Finding The One in the Many

  With an eye to “unitive pluralism” in our spiritual lives, the Ashland Interfaith Ministry Sunday starts a series of four forums on such issues as the meaning of life, our commitment to the earth, why is there suffering and how we can strengthen our faith in an “intolerant world.”

   The popular series features speakers from many faiths -- Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Mormon, Native American, Quaker, Sufi, Theosophical, and Unitarian. The community is invited to join in the dialog.

   All participants are “comfortable in plurality and understand the importance for people of various spiritual traditions to work for the common good,” said forum moderator Rich Lang of Omega House Ministries on the Southern Oregon University campus.

   “It’s about respect, appreciation, mutuality and positive regard,” he said, “in an age of emerging cultural globalism.”

   The first two forums, on life’s meaning and nature stewardship, meet at Redford Lounge, Stevenson Union at SOU. The last two, on suffering and tolerance meet at Pioneer Hall, Winburn Way, Lithia Park, Ashland. All are 3-4:30 Sundays and are free.

   Speakers include Judith Jensen, Prakash Chenjeri, Dan Harris, Pat Herdklotz, Fran Orrok, Rich Lang, Marc Sirinsky, Khalil Elliot, Robin Noll, Bruce Newman, Ray Orndoff, Larry Shippen, Mary Foster, Abdi Aziz Guled, Michael Powell, David Zaslow, LaUna Huffines, Barbara Rosen, Ann Bartlett and Robert Owens.

   “Dialogs like this are important today because many people are trying to get information, but unfortunately it might come from talk radio or hate radio, so you get intolerance,” said Muslim Mary Foster of Ashland, a panelist.

   The forum’s goal, she added, is to come together to look at the similarities in religion, such as fasting in both the Mormon and Muslim faiths, and the circle in the Native American sweat lodge and the Islamic Kabba rite in Mecca.

   SOU Philosophy Professor Prakash Chenjeri said he will focus on the similarities of the world views of various faiths, which “define the purpose and place in the world” of adherents – most of them being a process of movement toward wholeness and oneness with the divine, rather than the “misery” inherent in our seeming separateness.

   “We’re not asking people to water down their faith (by learning tolerance),” said Lang, whose Omega House is also sponsoring the forum. “All the faiths face the same issues of poverty, hunger and the fate of the earth. It’s important for people of all religions to nourish their own faith while they work together for the common good.”   ~








Matthew Bourgault: Spritual Provocateur

  Though radical street preacher Matthew Bourgault was roundly viewed as obnoxious, his sermons on the Southern Oregon University quad – protected by free speech law – are having the positive effect of stimulating campus discussion about the real message of Christ, according to local Christians.

   Bourgault, who has successfully pressed charges against SOU and other universities for free speech infringement, stood atop a table in front of Stevenson Union two afternoons this week, hurling charges at onlookers – including calling them sinners, fornicators, sodomites, pot-smokers, devils and people bound for hell.

   Ashland Christian Fellowship pastor Luke Frechette, summoned by two SOU students who are in his “flock,” came to do “crowd control” by reminding students that the problem was not Bourgault, but them, because they were giving him attention and trading insults.

   “It was intense, out of control, but it created a teachable moment,” said Frechette. “God fully redeemed it. The door was closed and Matt blew it open. I was in the dorms Tuesday night, teaching – and God was the topic at SOU for the first time in many years.”

   Although Bourgault was “an angry man who spoke in an evil tone didn’t portray someone who knew Christ,” said student and ACF member Josh Capeheart, his speech stimulated many dialogs between Christians and non-Christians about “the real message of love, forgiveness and acceptance.”

   Student Mandy Smith, who called for Frechette, agreed the event heightened discussion on campus about who Christ is – and led to her engaging in many talks with Christians and those of other or no religion.

   “I was hurt and upset. You can tell a Christian by the love in their eyes and to my knowledge there was no love in this man,” said Smith. “I talked to lots of people and everyone had the same reaction.”

   However, said Smith, the event brought another lesson – learning that “he has his own agenda and travels around the country, using the gospel to incite people to violate his free speech or assault him. He makes his living off it and he’s been to our campus many times.”

   Bourgault in 2004 sued SOU, after being kicked off campus for violating “verbal harassment and “creating an unreasonable atmosphere” clauses of SOU’s Open Forum Policy. He won $500 and SOU was ordered not to enforce those clauses again.

   Campus security kept watch on his sermons this year but finally interfered only when noise levels – the preaching, as well as students operating noise makers, clackers and air horns – got high enough that they “impinge on the ability to conduct class or operate the university,” said co-director of campus safety Eric Rodriguez.

   He then ordered both Bourgault and students to disperse, which they did. 

   A campus email from Jonathan Eldridge, SOU vice president for student affairs explained that the market place of ideas at the university “sometimes gets messy” but all people’s ideas and words, even if they’re “offensive speech” are still protected.

   Where violence becomes possible, speech is no longer protected, he said, concluding that “in some cases a lack of attention to the behavior in question may simply make it go away.”

   In quotes recorded by the campus newspaper, The Siskiyou, Bourgault, pastor of Consuming Fire Campus Ministries in Kinard, Fla., charged students with smoking pot, having premarital sex and “hating the light” that’s in the Bible.

   A crowd of students was readily drawn into heckling, one yelling, when Bourgault began singing Amazing Grace, “Britney Spears has more talent than you.” Bourgault answered, “You're denying the truth that you know in your heart of hearts, Jesus Christ!”

   Student Alison Blakeslee responded, "Sir, I am a Christian, and you are not showing people the love of God.” Bourgault shot back, “God is looking for soldiers, not wimps. He's looking for people who will rise up. You are wandering around, sauntering along the road of pleasure.”

   At that point, another student hurled an epithet based on sexual orientation, inciting others to shout him down.  Bourgault said, “You’re victims!” A student shouted, “Victims of your hypocrisy!”

   Long boo’s and noisemakers soon followed and, with mounting din, all were dispersed. After being called gay, student Brandt Nakamura, said, “He’s doing a lot of harm to the on-campus Christian community. He’s damaging the message they are carefully trying to convey. He’s more than just a nuisance. He’s dangerous.”

   Eldridge in his email urged the campus community to ignore Bourgault but if they “believe they have been subjected to threats…are always encouraged to document the incident so that they may choose to pursue the matter against the offending party through appropriate channels as provided by state or federal law and/or city ordinance.”   ~







Sulcha: Reconciliation Through Prayer

As rumors of war cloud the holiday skies, Muslims, Jews and people of other faiths gather here Saturday evening to mark the Winter Solstice and to open their hearts to an extraordinary new peace process called “Sulcha” – reconciliation through prayer.

   Rabbi David Zaslow of Havurah Shir Hadash, Ashland, and Muslim peace activist Pete “Pirouz” Seda of Ashland will host a town meeting exploring Sulcha, a process created by conservative Jews and Palestinians, in which (in addition to the usual political discussions about land and violence) they pray together.

   “The people you’d least expect to be doing this – right wing religious people – are coming together by the hundreds, even thousands and finding a mechanism through prayer, instead of politics,” said Zaslow.

   “Politics, so far, has led mostly to more fighting. But in prayer, they’ve been able to lubricate the wheels and open their hearts. They find they’re praying to the same God and celebrating the same values of love of family, home and land. They find God has a purpose the them and it’s the same purpose.”

   At this point in world events, said Seda, all people are being called upon not just to follow the Golden Rule but to treat others much better than we treat ourselves.

   “We’re living in a very uncomfortable, short-sighted world right now,” Seda said. “Everyone wants to resort to the sword and our leaders, instead of leading are doing what’s popular and trying to satisfy peoples’ need to pound on someone.”

   “The sword will never solve our problems,” he added. “We people of this whole earth must reflect on the pain and suffering of people who don’t have – and to bring kindness, generosity and compassion to our neighbors. Forgiveness is better than revenge.”

   The “Winter Solstice Town Meeting” is free and open to the public, 6-10 p.m., Saturday at Havurah Shir Hadash synagogue, 185 Mountain Ave., Ashland. A 15-minute film will show Sulcha in action.

   During the town meeting, anyone may speak, provided they don’t blame, but rather speak of win-win solutions, said Steve Traisman of Walk In Peace Productions, Ashland.

   The celebration will feature “Peace Troubadour” and author James Twyman singing psalms of peace taken from all the world’s religions, Native American dance by Eagle and Raven Dancers and Native American music by Elk Thunder Drum, comprised of Donnie Yance, Cedar Miller and Rico Hererra.

   The event is a benefit and prayer service for Whitney Chatfield, 15, Ashland, who is battling Hodgkins lymphoma.

   “The evening is a celebration of life and of overcoming difficulties and polarization in the community and the world,” said Traisman. “It’s about getting beyond the finger-pointing in the world and connecting with the fact we’re all brothers and sisters.”   ~





The Longing of Women Ministers

  A man out front of Medford’s First Presbyterian Church recently has been stopping parishioners, telling them not to “waste their time” going to hear a woman minister – and that she “should know better” than to take the role of leader in a church.

   It’s not the first such incident for the church’s minister, Joyce DeGraaff. Once, a man seeking to get married told her he wanted a man (an assistant pastor) to perform the ceremony because he wanted “steak, not hamburger” for his wedding.

   “It was a cheap shot,” said DeGraaff. “We declined to do the wedding at all. I’ve even had transients at our food bank refuse to take help from me because I’m a woman minister. I had to laugh, yet it is abhorrent.”

   The incidents point to a centuries-old notion that, because God is seen as male, then men are closer to him and more able to convey his message, said Wendy McAninch-Ruenzi, [cq] parish associate with Ashland’s United Church of Christ and former campus pastor with Southern Oregon University.

   “It’s a subconscious process, expecting a male messenger – and when the messenger is female it creates a cognitive dissonance, a disturbance in what you expect. The response is to question what the female is saying, rather than to accept that it comes from on high. There’s more acceptance of direction offered by males and more balking at females.”

   Some strides have been made since the main Protestant denominations decreed equality for women ministers half a century ago, but, even with women filling about half the spots at seminaries now, only six women lead one of Jackson County’s 200 churches. Many women are associate pastors or deacons here.

   Area women ministers, along with dozens of associate pastors and deacons participate in a support group – Southern Oregon Women in Ministries. They generally report warm support from their congregations, with a scattering of cynics in the beginning.

   “I’ve experienced no discrimination,” said Rector Anne Bartlett of Ashland’s Trinity Episcopal Church. “What usually happens is that after about six months, people sidle up and say: I have to tell you that when I heard we were going to have a woman priest, I was appalled, but now I just don’t know what I was thinking.”

   “I’ve heard a lot of horror stories, but, except for a few crank letters in the beginning quoting Paul, I’ve never had any problems,” said Caren [cq] Caldwell, minister of Ashland’s United Church of Christ.  “The children who’ve grown up in this church think a minister is supposed to be female and that’s how they cast the genders when they play church.”

   When McAninch-Ruenzi graduated from Harvard Divinity School in 1982, she expected a “call” (hiring) early on. It took her two years and she saw it as discrimination. “I wasn’t happy about it. If half of seminary students are women and less than 10 percent of ministers are women, then something happened on the way to the pulpit. Many gave up and many weren’t hired.”

   McAninch-Ruenzi was a founding member of the National Association of Presbyterian Clergy Women, whose mission is to support and advocate for women ministers. “If you speak up,” she observed, “it can make you less employable. That’s true in any walk of life.”

   Rabbi Jackie Brodsky of Ashland, who serves temples in Redding and Coos Bay said most members have gotten past prejudice, but some are “still adjusting” to the ordaining of rabbis in 1973. “Prejudice against women runs deep and wide. It’s subtle.”

   When one member requested a lay chaplain for her death counseling and funeral, Brodsky later learned from a third party it was because of Brodsky’s gender. “It’s prejudice and it does exist. You move on. You can’t let it take the wind out of your sails.”

   Alice Knotts, pastor for Talent’s United Methodist Church and Rogue Rock Ministries describes being a woman minister as “relatively easy compared with 32 years ago, when I started.” Knotts was being considered for minister in another Oregon town when a family invited her to dinner to explain that “women shouldn’t teach men about religious life.”

   Knotts said it was “a shame” this area doesn’t use more women ministers because, based on the large female attendance in seminary, “God seems to be calling women to the ministry without finding a gender issue.”

   Women ministers have served in the Unitarian church since the Civil War, “but that doesn’t mean it’s been easy, because we’re dealing with the U.S. culture here,” said Patt [cq] Herdklotz [cq], minister of Ashland’s Unitarian-Universalist Church. “Unitarians have always been deeply involved in the feminist, suffragist and feminist theology movements and now about half our ministers are women.”

   Opponents of women ministers, DeGraaff notes, often cite first Corinthians, where Paul says, “Let your women keep silence in churches, for it is not permitted for them to speak, but they are commanded to be under obedience.”

   Having studied original Greek and Hebrew texts, DeGraff said they meant something quite different – that in ancient times, men studied the liturgy and that if women didn’t understand it, they shouldn’t ask during services, but wait till they got home and ask their husbands.

   “Women had leadership roles in churches since day one. Jesus and Paul were both very supportive of women. They’ve found 1st and 2d century mosaics showing women baptizing and sharing the sacraments. Mary the mother prophesied and the risen Christ chose to appear first to a woman, Mary Magdalene.”

   The gender picture in church has a decided political element, said Caldwell. “The more liberal churches and the ones like ours, which have no hierarchy above us that can tell a local church what to do, present the fewest hoops for women to jump through.”

   In the 1980s, when Herdklotz worked in Religious Leaders for Choice, she attempted dialogue with pro-life lay and clergy protestors in Wichita, Kan., but “I saw I was having a great deal of difficulty getting respect for my credentials because I was a woman, so I passed my job off to a man,” she said.

   The Unitarian church in the 1970s resolved to “ardently” root out any patriarchal bias in its worship, said Herdklotz. In sermons, she avoids the masculine pronoun, repeating the word God as often as necessary. Bartlett often “throws in the pronoun ‘she’ to show that God is beyond gender.” Brodsky also sidesteps the gender pronouns, calling God The Joyous Divine One, The Holy One or The Eternal.

   Bartlett’s two ordained deacons are both women and, during services, she has to cast men in other roles “to make sure we also have a strong male presence at the altar.” Episcopal priests are called father, so Bartlett, not liking the term mother, has picked another, gender-free word -- “Rev.”

   Despite low percentages of women in ministry, the tide has turned, said Knotts. “There’s a huge spiritual summit going on all over. It’s pulling down the dividing walls between secular and sacred and between the genders and bringing things together to make them whole.”   ~










Gene Burnett: the Tao of Songwriting

  Gene Burnett has two big passions, tai-chi and songwriting – and, being a Taoist, he teaches these in unusual ways that encourage harmony, balance and trusting yourself.

   And like a lot of people with something to say, Burnett sought – and found – a way to say it: writing a book, which isn’t all that hard, but skipping the aggravating part, which is finding a publisher.

   So, Burnett became the publisher, paid about $500, got a local designer to help with the cover, e-mailed his manuscript to the printer and, within 30 days, viola! He’s an author.

   His books, published by iUniverse, are “Songwriting for Geniuses: 25 Tips for the Genius in Everyone” ($11.95) and “Tai-chi for Geniuses: a Practice Companion for the Genius in Everyone” ($20.95).

   Authors can purchase POD at several levels – and at $500 a book, Burnett got an actual person to talk to him, fix errors, get an ISBN number and post it on their Web site. When he orders books, his cost is a little over half the cover price, so his profit is several times that paid by a regular publisher.

   By the way, Burnett uses the word “genius” to mean, not IQ, but the native, intuitive skill or “higher self” we all have – and to get away from the “for dummies” approach, which, he says, suggests we’re all stupid.

   “My genius speaks to me in the form of sudden inspirations, as well as “right” feelings and “wrong” feelings, feelings of “Yes!” and “No!”, that resonate throughout my body,” Burnett says in his songwriting book. “I have learned, with many years of practice, to tune into and listen to these feelings; to go where the “Yes!” feeling is and to slow down or turn back where the “No!” feeling is. I do what feels most deeply right to me, and I keep checking to see if what felt right to me once, still feels right to me now.”

   As Burnett sings the praises of his first two passions, he lauds the simple, cheap and democratizing phenomenon of publish-on-demand (POD), which allows authors full control over what gets published, lets them order only as many books as they need, allows them unlimited freedom to promote and market the book as much as they want and where they want and is better for the environment because no books get remaindered and thrown out.

   Being an “author” gives you significant cachet and opens the door for people to buy your message and hold it in their hands, so it’s “an expensive business card,” says Barnett. In addition, if you Google his name and book title, you get not only his websites, but his books listed on Amazon, Target, authortree.com, books.google.com and several others.

   Burnett hopes his Tai-chi book will stand out and find an audience because, instead of being illustrated with all the movements, representing a lineage going back ages into China or having a rigid right-and-wrong way of doing it, Burnett says his approach is “for self-directed people who want to guide their own practice and trust their own sense of right and wrong.”

   Different people want different things from tai-chi, he notes, so if you want to learn to relax, find a teacher who looks relaxed. Trust yourself. His approach is “use less force,” which is at the heart of Taoism.

   “I believe balance is unforced. You find it in your body. You can learn to balance in a natural way instead of inflicting your will. Trust your own sense of right and wrong,” says Burnett, who has taught tai-chi for 24 years and, a believer in the power of fresh air, conducts his classes at the band shell in Lithia Park.

   Burnett’s approach to songwriting is in a similar Taoist vein.

   “Try to write the song that’s in you, not what you think would be a good song. If you try to write a song that will change the world, that’s in your head and won’t work. Let go of what you’re holding onto. When you write the song that’s in you, it releases a charge in you. It releases emotion. You feel great!”

   Burnett performs at local venues, including Oak Tree, Liquid Assets and Alex’s, has written over 60 songs, recorded 15 CDs and sells them (he also allows free downloads or listening of all songs) on his Web site.


“Your inner genius can help you set
goals and directions, but it can also help you choose how
to get where you’re going and who to trust along the way.
Learning to trust this inner genius is not a quick and easy process.
It involves trial and error and the errors are sometimes
painful. Sometimes what seems like your inner genius telling
you to do something is actually not. When it is not, the results
you get will feel wrong. When it is your inner genius you’ve
been listening to, the results you get will feel right. This is
an ongoing process that never ends, since life, you, and your
inner genius are in constant motion. What feels right today
may not feel right tomorrow. Listening to your inner genius
means maintaining an open, inquiring, and unfinished mind
and body.”
                                            --Gene Burnett, from “Tai-Chi for Geniuses”








Evolution: It’s a Theory, Kind of Like Gravity

  On the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin, professors at Southern Oregon University will devote the week to emphasizing that evolution is a theory but that means it’s hard science.

   “It’s theory and it’s fact. You can say it’s ‘just a theory’ like the theory that the earth goes around the sun. In science, a theory is not speculation. It’s supported by mountains of evidence. It’s one of the best supported theories in science,” says Biology Prof. Charles Weldon, lead speaker of “Darwin Week.”

   A century and a half after publication of Darwin’s “Origin of Species,” some 44 percent of Americans still believe in the Biblical account of creation by God in seven days, as a finished work, according to a Gallup poll – and Weldon calls that “shocking.”

   “Evolution is rejected in large numbers in only two places in the world, America and Turkey, with the numbers in Europe being much lower,” said Weldon, in an interview. “Creation science and intelligent design are not science at all. They should be taught, though, to educate students about the difference between science and pseudo-science.”

   Weldon speaks on what the theory of evolution actually says and the evidence supporting it.

   As any scientific theory must be, evolution is testable and able to make predictions, such as when science was able to predict, a few years ago, where and in what type of strata would be found fossils linking the evolution of fish into amphibians. They were soon found in the predicted strata in Hudson’s Bay, Canada, he said.

   Evolution remains controversial, Weldon notes, because “Darwin took away the special status of humans as beings created in the image of God and superior to animals. He showed we’re animals, though rather unusual animals. It was a major upset to people and still bothers a lot of people, mostly among fundamentalists of Christianity and Islam.”

   Darwin’s discoveries have had a huge and continuing impact, not just on biology but on philosophy and modern thought, “as we adapt to ourselves as purely biological beings,” says SOU Philosophy Prof. Prakash Chenjeri.

   “People draw moral conclusions from the theory of evolution. I’m going to challenge that, because evolution is not a theory of ethics,” says Chenjeri. “I don’t take a stand on the intelligent design controversy, but I do have the position that it’s an anthropocentric view and, based on the evidence, does not seem to follow logically (from the theory of evolution).”

   Acceptance of evolution grew greatly after World War II, but Chenjeri says it remains much contested in the U.S., perhaps because of this country’s tradition of free speech.

   Biology Prof. Karen Stone says she will talk about advances in molecular biology, gene sequencing and other areas Darwin didn’t know about – and how they can create “great leaps” in adaptation. She will speak at 3 p.m. Tuesday in the Meese Room.

   A panel of professors – Mark Shibley of sociology, Craig Stillwell of University Seminar, John Sollinger of biology and Mark Krause of psychology, will speak.   ~










Steve Scholl: a Scholar of Islam
Stands in the Path of the Religious Right

   A scholar of all religions, member of none, crusader against extremism in any -- that’s how Ashland author Steve Scholl sees himself as he goes forth to tilt against the religious right in a book, lecture and workshop called “Why the Religious Right is Absolutely Wrong…Relatively Speaking.”

   That title is meant to be ironic, taking Christian evangelicals to task for thinking they have a handle on the real and final truth, yet allowing that – while he’s setting himself up as a critic of fundamentalism, Scholl doesn’t have the final truth either.

   The former owner of White Cloud Press in Ashland, Scholl has published many books and collections on religion and other topics and now wants to set off as an author in his own right, taking the powerful fundamentalist religions to the woodshed for a much-needed spanking.

   He kicks off his lecture and workshop at 7:30 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 8 at Unitarian Church, 87 Fourth St., Ashland, with appearances to follow in Eugene, Portland, Santa Cruz, Sacramento, Las Vegas, Seattle, and Los Angeles – and a book out early next year. A lecture Saturday evening is $10 and a workshop Sunday is $30.

   “What I’m trying to say is there’s a liberal religious response to the religious right,” says Scholl, 51. “The media tries to frame this as the Moral Majority vs. Secular Humanism and red vs. blue states, with evangelicals being the fastest growing group but what I’m saying is the most rapidly growing religious segment in America is not affiliated.”

   What is that non-affiliated group? It’s a bunch of independent-minded people – 24 percent, according to a Newsweek/Beliefnet poll, who accept the label of “spiritual but not religious.” These nonaffiliated people are concentrated in the Pacific Northwest.

   Scholl sees his mission as helping people steer away from fundamentalist thinking, that theirs is the only true faith and the others are wrong – a trend he sees as dangerous to American society, especially in its most extreme form, dominionism, which seeks a Christian-based political power.

   “About 15 to 20 percent of people in all religions feel there can only be one true faith, that it’s simply logical and the other faiths, if not evil are at least wrong and they’re going to hell,” says Scholl. “Most of the religious right feels this way, but they’re not the only ones with this hangup. Scratch the surface and all faiths have the myth of religious superiority.”

   Scholl wants to counter this problem by “talking in the public square about theology,” because Americans know very little about religions, even their main faith, Christianity.

   “Religion is supposed to be a source of enlightenment, harmony and community and instead we see it used for conflict, hatred and war. The question I’m posing is how can religions demilitarize their theology and see religious pluralism as positive, instead of a problem?”

   The Iraq War, though seemingly about weapons or democracy, is “filled with religious imagery and we don’t have any question that we’re fighting evil because it’s a religious ideology we oppose.”

   Scholl says religious intolerance comes from the natural desire for “what’s comforting in a world in flux -- a clear order in life, a feeling that this is what God requires, the man is the head of the household, elders and church leaders are obeyed. Fundamentalism is a response to modernity and complexity and it satisfies the need we all have to feel we are right.”

   While Scholl expresses worry about the influence of the religious right in the Republican party, which controls Congress and the White House, he says he’s not waving any red flags of warning about a religion-based political control of the country.

   “These people are running on empty. They don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of doing that. I’ve studied this and the pendulum swings both ways. My concern is the laziness of Americans, and how they’re saturated with entertainment, not that they’re going too far with patriotism. We’re insulated and often feel it’s us against the rest of the world.”

   But the rest of the world, Scholl adds, is much better educated and tolerant of diversity and religious pluralism.

   “I just got back from Morocco. My guide had a fifth-grade education, but he spoke five languages. I learned more about Sri Lanka listening to the radio there than I did all my life here. Outside this country, people really have an interest and want to know about the world. If your information is just coming from the local paper and cable tv, you just aren’t going to get it. Everywhere else, they do.”

   Scholl has a bachelor’s degree in religious studies from University of Oregon, did graduate work in Islamic studies at McGill University in Toronto and has lived extensively in the Mideast. He is author of Wisdom of the Master: The Spiritual Teachings of Abdu'l-Baha (White Cloud Press, 1997) and editor of Common Era: Best New Writings on Religion, and The Peace Bible: Words from the Great Traditions. He is a frequent columnist with The Oregonian.

   Bob Semes, director of the Jefferson Center for Religion and Philosophy in Ashland, says Scholl encourages enlightened thinking on religious issues and should be appealing to the “nones” – those people in surveys who, when asked their religious affiliation, reply “none.”

   “Interfaith work and a broadened perspective are vital to creating a world community,” says Rev. Pat Herdklotz of Ashland’s Unitarian-Universalist Church. “Work like Scholl’s, honoring all religious wisdom, should be viewed as similar to saving the diversity of species so as to increase our chances of survival.”

   Scholl next year plans to publish two books, Remembering God: Chant Practices of the Sufis and Losing My Religion: Finding Faith in the Ruins of the Temple.   ~









James Twyman:
‘Proof‘ That We’re All One

   The idea that “we are all one” is a warm and fuzzy nostrum for New Age believers, but author-musician James Twyman has made a movie, “The Proof,” that he says will should remove all doubt.

   Early this year, Twyman screened a bunch of people by having them each hide a spoon somewhere in Ashland Shop N Kart market, then mentally send him images and messages about where to find the spoons.

   The best “sender” was Leslie Bates, 22, of Ashland, so she was given $1,000, and told to get on a plane and hide one of his books anywhere in the United States, then come back home.

   Twyman got out a map, tuned into her mental images and directions about where the book was – and they got on a plane with his film crew to record what happened.

   It worked, says the Ed Keller of Ashland, the film’s director. Actively receiving her mental messages, Twyman flew to the city on Feb. 9 and within an hour of landing, had the book in his hands, he says. He declined to reveal what city it was, noting it would give away the ending.

   “I was there watching the whole thing unfold through the lens. I joked with friends that if he’s pulling a hustle, it would have to be incredibly elaborate,” says Keller. “I really was impressed.”

   Twyman acknowledges it may be hard to believe but he claims his 20-minute film “provides actual proof that we are not separate, isolated and alone, but connected and one…on unseen but very essentially levels, though we seem to be these beings in separate bodies.”

   Bates, too, vouches that the psychic experiment was all completely above board, even though Bates was physically with Twyman, “sending” directions. The two are longtime friends, she added.

   “It was “as honest as can be, no correlating of information, straightforward, truthful… mentally indicated go right, go left, but didn’t say it.”

   Twyman, who has written 12 books about higher consciousness, put out seven music CDs, produced four movies and given concerts all over the world as “the Peace Troubador,” said he kept the movie short to facilitate distribution of it through YouTube and internet sites – and to get out the message that, as mystics of all traditions have said, all humanity is one.

   The film will premiere at 5 and 8 p.m. Saturday, March 21 at Rogue Valley Metaphysical Library (upstairs in suite 7). It shows with “Leap! The Movie,” which features Twyman as one of several speakers on “the myths of reality.” Twyman and Bates will speak at the event, in person.

   The idea for the film sprang from a challenge by his publisher, Hay House (“Emissary of Light,” “The Art of Spiritual Peacemaking”), which offered to donate $50,000 to a charity of his choice if he could find a hidden object anywhere in the lower 48 states, but in plain sight, not in a safe or at the bottom of a lake, he said.

   The president of Hay House, Reid Tracy, was satisfied the experiment was above board “because he knows me” and trusts in Twyman’s honesty, Twyman said. The money was paid to charities that help children and women in half-way houses in San Diego, he said.

   “If you want to doubt it, it’s hard to prove anything,” Twyman said.

   On the trailer, viewable on YouTube by searching “The Proof trailer,” Hay is seen searching in a downtown area with Bates at his side, then saying to the camera, “This is not a trick and no one is in on the game.”

   Twyman, who earlier gave an online course on how to psychically bend spoons, will give another online course on how to repeat the feat in “The Proof.” The movie will explain the “how” of finding hidden objects, notes Keller, adding that it’s about “getting very clear and open to receiving information.”

   In producing his last movie, “The Moses Code,” Twyman said it brought to the fore that humanity is one and “I realized there was a great interest in going beyond theorizing. People want to experience it today – and in a fun way.”

   Twyman added that the film should not be viewed as a psychic stunt that overshadows the spiritual oneness of humanity.

   What would have happened if he hadn’t found the book? “We would have stopped the project…but what was proven is we’re connected on the deeper layers and that’s very important. We share the same atoms and are more connected than separate.”

   In the bigger picture, Twyman said the importance of his experiment is to comfort people in this time of war and economic upheaval that “all wars and traumas come, at bottom from the sense of separation from each other, both as individuals and groups.”

   On the internet: Search “The Proof trailer” on YouTube. Twyman’s Web sites are www.emmissaryoflight.com and www.jamestwyman.com.    ~










Christopher Briscoe:
Catching the Common Thread in Photos

  Over the past decades, Ashland photographer Chris Briscoe has been successful, shooting lots of pictures, from locals to celebrities – but he wanted to get out of his comfort zone, do something different, learn, grow, experience, so, camera in hand, he hopped on a plane to Bangkok, not knowing where the journey would take him.

   Where it took him was life-changing. Traveling around Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam by moped and bus, Briscoe quickly found himself among the common people and gifting them with the first portrait they ever had – printed immediately on his battery-powered Hewlett-Packard photo printer.

   As the photos were a high point in their lives, the people of Southeast Asia were a peak in Briscoe’s life, even though some of his best pictures were taken in a garbage dump, where refugees from tyranny and violence in Myanmar were eking out a living.

   The journey last year led to a touching, privately-printed book called “Common Ground,” a publication that has found its way to the U.S. State Department, which now wants Briscoe to do a similar project in Haiti, poorest nation in the hemisphere.

   “What I learned is that families living in garbage dumps have the same threads running through their lives as we do,” said Briscoe. “They want the same things, a good education for their children, a happy life.”

   In one shot, a small girl stands atop a pile of trash, her tent home in the background, wearing a wild array of castoff clothing and addressing the camera with an expression of pure joy.

   Of the shot, Briscoe noted, “In a lot of respects they are happier than we are. They’re grateful for everything. I was struck by that over and over, even though their lives are defined by their struggle.

   Mae-Wen Richards of People’s Bank of Commerce in Ashland points to a large print of the picture in her office and says, “She’s in a dump with a very happy smile. Immediately you realize she really has nothing and lives there in that dump. What Chris is telling us in this picture is that maybe they’re the happiest people of all.”

   Coming home to the U.S. was, for Briscoe, the real culture shock, as he saw our culture with fresh eyes.

   “We don’t have to struggle. We’re on third base already. We don’t have to dodge bullets to survive. Over there, in the jungle regions, 1 in 250 people have lost limbs because of land mines or from bombs left over from the Vietnam War.

   So moved was Briscoe during a month in Southeast Asia in spring 2008 that he came home to bring his 15-year old son Quincy back to the region in summer for another month. Quincy, a member of the Ashland High School varsity tennis team, took two racquets and 100 tennis balls with him. He taught Asian kids how to hit the ball and gave the balls away, to their delight.

   The book is a set piece of contrast, with awe-inspiring studies of the lined faces of the aged and workers struggling under heavy loads beside shots of irrepressible kids in classrooms, shooting rubber bands in the dump or chasing after Quincy and his tennis balls.

   John Davis of Davis & Cline Gallery on A Street, writing in the book’s forward, lauded Briscoe’s pictures for their “artistic completeness and vision of humanity” amounting to a contemporary work of fine art.

   Virtually everyone Briscoe met saw America as the golden land of opportunity, security, choice and a good education – and they wanted to come here, said Briscoe.

   “It gave me a new perspective. When you grow up in the jungle surrounded by land mines, how do you take anyone out of that and put them in Costco and Disneyland?”

   Briscoe established contacts in the region with the help of Project Enlighten, which is run by volunteers and gives aid in Southeast Asia for humanitarian, educational, environmental and other purposes. The organization, at www.projectenlighten.org is using Briscoe’s book as a fundraising tool and gift to high donors.

   Briscoe, a Santa Barbara native, came to Ashland in 1971 and taught third grade at Walker School, finding his way into photography by freelancing for the Daily Tidings, starting in 1980. Among his clients have been Kirk Douglas, Catherine Zeta Jones, Dennis Miller, Rob Lowe, Olivia Newton-John and onetime Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev.

   Briscoe’s “Common Ground” is available at his studio at 4th and A Streets in Ashland or e-mail photo@chrisbriscoe.com.


At Mae Ra refugee camp in Thailand. -- “It is a crowded, trash-filled maze, where barefoot children run unattended and adults wander with little to do. My camera and tiny, battery-operated photo printer are my entry ticket, my own connection to the people who live here. I walk among the bamboo huts, trying to look as though I belong, but feeling very much a stranger in a strange land. I stop and ask a family, by pointing to my camera, permission to take their photo. They smile and nod, sitting in an open bamboo doorway. A few clicks later and I bring out my printer. It starts to spin and whir in an effort to crank out their first portrait. In seconds, the word echoes and a crowd gathers. I am now surrounded by children and old ladies, stealing glances at me then back to the printer, making a connection. A dozen heads hover above the printer, waiting for the magic to emerge. An elder barks an order and a few of the shoving kids step back. The shiny color print finally spits itself out, setting off cheers around me. I am no longer separated, but am part of the community.”   ~





P.Z. Meyers: God Doesn’t Matter in Evolution

Our genes organize and mutate by random chance, do a lot of “tinkering,” come up with a lot of purposeless change and complexity and science proves it’s all done without any divine guidance – so says biologist and noted blogger P.Z. Myers, who will speak on evolution at Southern Oregon University tonight. [thur]

   From a scientific point of view, said Meyers in a phone interview, God didn’t create life, doesn’t work in tandem with evolution and doesn’t exist.

   “We don’t need him. I don’t at all believe in him – and when we die, we’re dead, end of story,” said Myers.

   His talk, which marks the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s “The Origin of Species,” will use Darwin for a point-by-point refutation of religious arguments against evolution, most of which, he notes, “are warmed over stuff” from 200 years ago.

   The presentation is sponsored by The Jefferson Center.

   Myers, who said he gets 2.5 million hits a month on his blog “Pharyngula” on scienceblog.com, said of supporters of creationism and intelligent design, “They’re wishing and hoping there’s a designer out there. Their cardinal sin is ignorance.”

   He added, “They’re very ignorant people, like the people who believed the earth was the center of the universe. They will disappear. It may take a century. We will all be laughing about it.”

   The event is not a debate, but has stirred controversy in the SOU Biology Department, where some teachers have questioned whether students should be encouraged to attend a forum where the speaker opposes views of scientists with religious perspectives on origins of life.

   Biology department chairwoman Karen Stone said creationism and intelligent design are sometimes brought up in class, where appropriate, as a “critical thinking response” – and there can be “solid reasons for studying and discussing it, but it doesn’t belong in a science class on equal footing with evolution because “it’s not science-based.”

   SOU Biology Professor Roger Christianson, in an interview, said there are alternative explanations of how diversity happened and “people who believe in intelligent design feel the complexity of life is too great to come about by naturalistic forces.”

   Christianson, an evangelical Christian, said he has brought up intelligent design and creation science in class to show the swing of the pendulum between the two schools of thought and “I suggest the truth is somewhere in the middle.”

   He added, “I talk mostly about adaptation that can be seen from either point of view. At this point in my career, I feel I can talk about anything that’s appropriate. I have my understanding about how the world operates and I explain that. I see the world as an evolving pot, with natural selection as the driving force, but I certainly don’t rule out that an intelligence or a creator is involved.”

   Christianson noted that he has never been called to account by superiors or spoken to about his beliefs or academic presentation of the issue – and Stone said teachers have academic freedom and their careers would not be jeopardized for bringing up intelligent design, as long as it was not put on equal footing with evolution.

   “Many students’ minds are already made up and they don’t appreciate anyone questioning those beliefs. My perspective is how to approach the idea with critical thinking and to provide students with tools, instead of telling them how to think,” said Stone. “It’s a long-term process to push toward independent thinking.”

   Much of the furor in the debate, said Christianson, comes from the argument over “first cause” (of life) and the seeming fact that neither side can prove whether God or nature did it.

   “That’s a weakness of creation science. You never can test it, whether a creator was present or not,” however, he added, it should be remembered that, before Darwin, almost all scientists were Christians who believed life was the creation of an intelligent mind and, as you learn about its pattern, you learn more about the creator.

   “Now, mainstream science is all naturalistic, but a healthy minority believe there is an intelligent creator – and that doesn’t keep them from doing good science,” said Christianson.

   As evidence of seemingly divinely inspired complexity, Christianson pointed to the woodpecker who came equipped with skull padding so that its incessant pecking would not cause brain swelling and death.

   “How can you arrive there from natural selection? You would have had to have the padded brain in place already,” he said.

   Coming from the other side, Myers said cells engage in “bricolage,” which means endless tinkering, like people doing “found art” by trying various pieces of driftwood in their production, having a lot of complexity and extra pieces, which may have no evolutionary advantage, but which supply the mutations needed for adaptation and selection.

   “When you analyze it, you don’t see the evidence of design. It’s purposeless. Many changes have no functionality, but they’re mostly OK for survival,” said Myers.

   Another SOU biology teacher, Christine Oswald, said students often bring up the creationism controversy and “my take is they’re not exposed to the evidence, logic and theory of evolution. They have tremendous misunderstanding and urban legends about it.”

   One example, she noted, is the widespread belief that all organisms are advancing to a perfected state on a predetermined path and that humans are at the highest level.

   “Religion is human-centric and says we’re made in God’s image. There are two ways to look at it. The other way is that we’re one of many species,” said Oswald. “It’s the million dollar question. It’s almost beyond my understanding. One is an evolution-based hypothesis accepted by authorities without question and the other is constantly asking questions and, in my feeble brain, I can’t get my mind around it.”

   Oswald added, “Religious beliefs help find the best way to behave in the world and help us find peace. Science is not about that. It tries to find answers….Intelligent design and creationism try to use scientific information to give legitimacy to their claims but why would you use evidence-based information to justify something that’s not evidence-based? They’re in two different realms completely.”   ~








A Treasure of Byzantine Art
Up a Dirt Road in Southern Oregon

Tucked away up a dirt road on a farm north of Rogue River is a dazzling treasure of sacred art.

   From the outside, it looks like an ordinary, two-story storage shed.  But open the doors and you enter into a chapel not unlike those painted by the masters of Medieval Byzantine religious art.

   It’s the home, for now, of St. Innocent’s Russian Orthodox Church, the only church of that faith in Southern Oregon, built over the last two years on the “back forty” of its priest, Father Seraphim Cardoza.

   Housing $40,000 worth of art done by master iconographer Daniel Ogan, the chapel houses the small congregation until it can rebuild its old church – visible with golden onion domes beside I-5 in Rogue River – perhaps starting as early as this year.

   As that project nears completion, Ogan, trained by Russian icon-painting masters in the nineties, plans to deck it in similar glories.

   For the time, services are being held 15 minutes north, out Evans Creek, in a chapel decked out in a breath-taking array of gilt icons of the Savior, Mary and child and many saints.

   The congregation of 30 is a modest “family” and their services, all sung and performed standing, are restrained, but the church is intended to be a dazzling storehouse of art, which reflects that the world itself was made sacred by Jesus, said Seraphim.

   Ogan donated 300 hours of icon painting to Seraphim’s chapel, a labor worth up to $40,000 on the open market, Ogan said. He used medieval colors, perspectives, themes and techniques, including mixing paints with egg tempura and pigments from the earth and building up an absolutely smooth painting surface with 20 layers of fish skin glue and gesso.

   “I study the life of each saint before I paint and I try to pray as I do the work, but I don’t always remember to. I’m not the holiest guy. But I do go in a zone where nothing else but the painting exists,” said Ogan, who perfected his art in seven years of isolation living on Kodiak Island in Alaska before coming to Southern Oregon last year.

   The central characteristic of the faith, he added, is that it has proceeded with “nothing new and nothing novel,” in a straight line from the church of the Apostles, as noted by their bumper sticker, “Proclaiming the truth since A.D. 35.”

   The chapel is like walking from a rural Oregon farmyard into heaven itself, an effect intended by Seraphim and all Orthodox builders before him, said the black-frocked priest, noting the numbers of people who’ve burst into sobs on entering.

   “It’s a holy place, created by God in his merciful grace and I thank God for it,” said Seraphim, pointing out the tall painting of the hierarchy of Mary, angel and Christ ascending in the apse, behind an altar of gilt objects. “It’s all there.”

   Fr. Seraphim started out to build a humble 10 x 10 foot prayer retreat behind his rural home, where he lives with his wife.  Over the last two years, it grew, to put it mildly.

   Parishioners heaped sweat equity on it and donated materials. Friends, Christians from other faiths, including evangelicals, wrote checks, some as big as $10,000. A contractor, not a member of the church, donated his skills at minimum wage.

   There are no pews, as members of the Orthodox faith “don’t sit in the presence of God,” said Seraphim. All members stand – men on one side, women on the other -- on the marble-esque floor and sing the liturgy, which is a close as possible to the original, 20 centuries ago, he said.

   “It’s got the depth and tradition I was looking for,” said the icon painter Daniel Ogan, who in the 1990’s, learned his trade in a seven-year apprenticeship with Russian iconogaphers. “I was a fundamentalist, but, God love ‘em, I wasn’t comfortable there. There’s just something earthy about the Orthodox church.”

   The new church, to be started in 2006 on the site of the old one at 4922 N. River Rd, at the south edge of the town of Rogue River, will feature an even bigger array of icons by Ogan, he said, as well as the familiar gold onion domes, which signify a candle burning with passion for Christ.

   Why the donation of masterful art to a tiny parish in Southern Oregon? “I like the church, I like Father Seraphim and they didn’t have much money,” said Ogan, a trained psychologist who works as in Josephine County schools and businesses as a counselor with ADAPT and teaches psychology at Rogue Community College in Grants Pass.

   Over the entry and dominating the nave of the small chapel is a mural of Jesus helping Peter into the boat during the storm, a reminder, said Seraphim, that “no matter how many times you feel you’re going to drown, Christ is there to pull you out.”

   Everywhere you turn, there’s something to draw the eye and open the heart – a small “Last Supper” up high on a wall – seven ascending candles in gold candlabra, a gold-encased Bible and censer on the altar.

   “A woman came in here for the fist time and started weeping, saying the last time she felt like this was in an ancient church in Rome,” said Seraphim. “It’s otherworldly. It doesn’t make me or this church better than others, but it’s just something about the changelessness, the continuity from the time when Christ founded it.”

   The Russian Orthodox was created in 988 A.D., when Prince Vladimir I baptized the entire population of Kiev in the River Dneiper and adopted the religion of the Byzantine Empire as the faith of the Rus’ state, according to a history written by Seraphim. The church was the fastest growing in American in the first years of the 20th century, but it was administered by bishops in Russia – and they were brought down by the Russian Revolution of 1917.

   Today, he added, the Russian Orthodox Church, with 250 million members is the largest Christian group outside the Catholic Church. It is part of Eastern Orthodoxy, which has 350 million members. Russian Orthodoxy in the U.S. claims about 10 million members.

   A handful of St. Innocent parishioners have immigrated from Russia, but many find it hard to get employment, so they move to larger cities, he noted.

   Seraphim led a large Evangelical church in California till his conversion to Orthodoxy in 1978 – a step he made from “wanting to know if there was a church, if it had a continuous history from Christ and if it could be found today. The answer was yes.”

   Spurring his conversion was the presence of thousands of Protestant denominations, all different, but all reading from the same Bible. “That said to me that if we’re not gratified and entertained with one church, we’re determined to go do our own thing and find another. Each person is his own pope and is infallible. We’re spoiled.”

   Addressing his former Protestant faith, Seraphim called it a “failed experiment for the most part – and our culture, which was founded by Protestants, will show that with the lapse of civility and the unwillingness of people to take responsibility for their own actions. We live in a post-Christian culture.”

   The Orthodox Church is determined not to change anything or lower the original standards, morals, sacred traditions and worship service, he added.

   “We don’t change anything because it feels good or someone says God told me. An Orthodox person would never say God told me to do something. We would never have an espresso bar in church – give me a break,” said Seraphim. “We have no instruments in church, no seats. The organ and pew are 18th century inventions. We would never have an Inquisition or Crusades, never convert by the sword, as happened even in early America. God gave us all free will to choose.”

   The Orthodox Church considers men and women equal and allows marriage, divorce, dancing and drinking, but expects members to do all they can to keep a marriage together and never dance or drink indecently.

   “To our members, those things have lost their attraction. There is nothing more heavenly than our services, where we converse with the Almighty,” said Seraphim, who is an ex Marine Corps sergeant.

   Orthodox priests were long black “padrisnik” robes and “scofia” hat as signs of repentance of earthly mistakes, but,  “if we seem serious, don’t mistake seriousness for inner joy.”

   Services at St. Innocent Orthodox Church, Rogue River, are 5:30 p.m. Saturdays and 9:30 a.m. Sundays. They are open to the public.  Because of remote location of the temporary church, call Fr. Seraphim for directions, 582-2128.   ~







Michael Maag: Living as Thor

On Aug. 3, 2003, Michael Maag, master electrician for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival was riding on Highway 66 by Emigrant Lake, training for a 100-mile bicycle race, when he was hit by a car, sent through the windshield and paralyzed from the chest down.

   Today, Maag, 45, is still pedaling and training for a race, the California International Marathon on Dec. 6, but it’s in a low-slung three-wheeler, powered entirely by his hands.

   And he’s still on the job, now in a wheel chair, in charge of all the Festival’s lighting.

   Maag was in critical condition for two weeks and in the hospital for 68 days. His T-9 and T-10 thoracic vertebrae (about in the middle of the torso), where crushed and he almost lost his left leg, but escaped with a titanium rod in it.

   At first, in physical therapy, it looked as if Maag would be able to walk on crutches, but growing scar tissue on the spine completed the paralysis.

   The Festival in 2003 held a benefit performance of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” for him and installed ramps and an elevator for easier access on his job. His crew of seven quickly accommodated to his new abilities and, says Maag, “what they wanted was my mind, and others could do the physical activity.”

   The Festival is a self-insurer and has handled much of the considerable bill, which Maag estimated at $750,000.

   In a hospital in Denver, where he got surgery to remove scar tissue, Maag found himself in the company of many paraplegics and “quads” in much worse shape than himself – an experience that left him understanding how deep in human nature is the will to live.

   “People tell me how fantastic it is, what I’m doing and some say, in my place, they’d sit home and watch TV,” says Maag. “But no, you wouldn’t. We humans fight to live the best way we can. I see that so often. Everyone is fighting that fight. No one is giving up.”

   Although Maag has chronic neuropathic pain, which feels like “bright, hot water” in his legs, the draw of cycling has offered the path to participation in the outside world he has loved all his life.

   “It’s absolutely essential for me to have this freedom. You can get in a trap after an accident and stay close to home, not see much of the world,” he says. “The freedom of the hand-cycle – I can get out to Central Point and disappear as long as I want on the back roads.”

   Maag does cycling marathons – he did the Portland Marathon last year – “not to prove anything, but to DO it. I love being out here with the wind in my hair, hearing the songbirds. It’s essential to my being.”

   Before the accident, Maag and his wife of 17 years, Gwen Turos, a triathlete and stage manager at the Festival, did many bicycling events together – and she stood by him, helping equip their home with ramps and lower counters (he loves to cook) – even painting “Thor’s Hammer” on the side of his three-wheeler.

   The ancient Scandanavian god has been a special entity, close to Maag – and his wife furthered the gesture, he says, by getting a tattoo of Thor on her chest.

   “It’s been a real interesting and challenging road,” said Maag, about to take off on the Bear Creek Greenway from Ashland to Phoenix and back on a sunny fall afternoon.

   “I feel so completely blessed by the Festival. They’re family…It’s been fantastic,” says Maag. “And there’s no way I could have done it without Gwen. She’s been there in every way possible. A lesser person would have taken the easy road and left.

   “We would have been all over the world (in athletic events) but all that changed and went away.  She’s been the person to push me up the hill and get me started…She loves me. I’m the luckiest guy in the world.”   ~








Dennis Peron: Medical Marijuana
The Drug of the Middle Class

When he speaks here Tuesday evening, Dennis Peron, the “father of medical marijuana” wants to get rid of the idea that pot is a recreational drug – rather, it’s a drug that all users employ for medicinal reasons.

   “The first time you use it may be for recreational reasons, but after that, with all the expense, risk and bother to get and use it, you’re doing it (in addition to medical uses) for psychological reasons, because of past traumas.”

   Peron, who opened the nation’s first “pot club” and championed California’s 1996  medical marijuana ballot measure – the first in the nation – into law, speaks 6 to 7:30 p.m., Tuesday at Meese Auditorium at Southern Oregon University. It’s presented by Ashland Alternative Health and is free.

   Peron, in a phone interview urged across-the-board legalization of growing and distribution of marijuana, noting that even though enforcement costs the criminal justice system a fortune, everyone – “growers, sellers, cops, county assessors, everyone is comfortable with it (prohibition) and wants to keep it illegal.”

   In passing medical marijuana laws, Peron feels backers changed the image of pot from “long-hair, hippie crazy” to a drug of middle-class people.

   “It helped make it more benevolent. We changed the tide,” said Peron, adding that the thrust of his work now is ballot measures to normalize distribution, so “you can get it at Walgreen’s,” making the drug affordable at $2 to $5 a day instead of 10 times that, as at present.

   Peron wants to disabuse the public of the idea that pot is for recreation, something that makes you “high.”

   “It’s easy to trivialize marijuana with that,” he said. “What’s the opposite of high? It’s low. No one wants to admit they’re depressed…You can find a million reasons to be depressed in our society, like world hunger and war. A lot of lives are in shambles.

   “I believe marijuana helps people get through the day and see a silver lining. It makes you conscious of who you are and what you’re doing. It’s an aid to psychiatry.”

   Peron said he’s against the proposal, brought up recently by Rogue Valley legislators, of legalizing pot and letting the state be the only grower, in order to ensure consistent quality.

   “The state has a vested interest,” he said, referring to its historic prosecution of growers and users. “It’s been a cash cow for them. I support it being for sale at Walgreen’s.”

   Peron, a colleague of assassinated San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk, said, “The message he gave me is that people have to have hope and not give up. I’m against the wall and I’m not giving up…My people (marijuana users) have to be free. We’ve been persecuted, marginalized and vilified for 50 years. It’s time to be free, not partially free. We have to confront reality and change it.”

   Also a gay rights activist, Peron said he came to the battle to legalize pot when his lover was dying of AIDS and found that marijuana helped while chemotherapy didn’t.

   “When he died, I decided to dedicate my life to alleviate the suffering” of users, he said. “I opened the (Cannabis Buyers Club) to serve the dying. It was in the belly of the beast. The cops and the mayor supported me.”

   The classifying of pot as a federal Schedule 1 drug, in the same category as heroin, has been “all politics,” driven by President Richard Nixon who “hated marijuana and loved war,” said Peron, adding that, since President Obama “called off” federal prosecution of marijuana offenses, states understand they’re free to pass legalization.

   The presentation is sponsored by Ashland Alternative Health, a medical marijuana clinic. Director Alex Rogers predicted backers of Oregon’s proposed ballot measure for a state licensed, nonprofit supply system would get enough signatures to get on this November’s ballot.

   Rogers said he opposes state control of all marijuana growing because “they don’t have the ability to provide a multitude of strains” which are beneficial to specific ailments. After the dispensary initiative, he added, advocates will work on an end to all civil and criminal penalties for cannabis.   ~










Valentines: What’s It All About

  Like Mother’s Day, Valentine’s is known as a “You Better…Or Else” kind of holiday, which brings up the question, is it a bunch of commercial hype, designed to promote business for florists, greeting card and chocolate companies, wineries and cozy restaurants – or is it really about love?

   For Jessica Bryan of Talent – who is putting on a Valentine’s Sing-along – the holiday is under-used if it only focuses on romantic love between two people.

   “It’s a time for lovers, but it’s also a time for the community to get together and share something meaningful with each other,” says Bryan, who will open her event with a group singing of Ann Murray’s “(I Want to Sing You a) Love Song.” 

   Her event is 5 to 8 p.m. on Valentine’s at Grilla Bites in Ashland and is free and open to the public for all to sing as equals, she says, and “enjoy the outpouring of love.”

   Although she enjoys going out to Valentine dinner with her husband of 22 years, “relationships activist” Marla Estes of Ashland warns against the “irresponsible” promotion of romantic love – the idea that there’s a soulmate out there for you -- and you will recognize them, fall in love and the rest is sparkly happiness.

   “The question, says Estes, is: how can we keep the good part of romantic love and not be cynical while being IV’d (intravenous) with all this in song lyrics and TV, that our prince or princess will come? If we’re always waiting for the right person, then we’re constantly fantasizing and half our mind has already left whatever relationship we’re already in.”

   Faced with questions about love, Asian art dealer Julie Freed of Ashland, has just built a Valentine’s altar in her home, complete with flowers and hearts, in order to “get clear” about love.

   “I’m of the mindset that we should celebrate love every day, not just one day. That’s what we’re here for, to love each other,” says Freed, noting that, despite the commercial hype around Valentine’s, “I’m way into the man being romantic. It says you’re special and you are the one I choose.”

   Pointing to the bumper sticker that says “commit random acts of kindness,” Sally Melton of Medford says “I am an un-Valentine girl” and would rather have a random card or gift on any random day, rather than on one designated day.

   “Valentine’s and Christmas are fine, but they cause undue consternation for people. It seems forced and contrived. They cause more pain than happiness because of all the expectations from TV that you have to get a special ring or life’s no good.”

   Retired Southern Oregon University professor Reider Peterson said he normally gets flowers for his girlfriend and “try to do something romantic, at least go out to dinner. It’s not as bad as Christmas. Halloween and Valentine’s are the good holidays.”

   Often overlooked in the mad Valentine’s rush to give and get love is the simple fact that love is immensely practical because it’s good for your health, says Freed. “It makes us incredibly vibrant and alive to feel and express love. It’s incredibly strengthening to us physically.”

   With age, says Bryan, 61, love matures and is not showy and full of infatuation, so her husband, Tom Cluny, does it just right, being considerate, generous and “showing up” where it really counts – by doing the dishes – and doing them with a sense of humor.

   “That really endears me to him,” Bryan says. “It means a lot more to me than buying a card and flowers on a specific day.”

   Adds Estes, “It’s a time to be quiet and romantic and ask, how can we take some goodness from that archetype of romantic love and find what’s beautiful, without falling into the illusions around it.”

   It’s not just about the couple in love, however. Estes will get a red rose for a friend who’s been going through a lot, she says. And what her husband Tom does that touches her heart on Valentine’s?  “He makes Valentine’s cards for the kids and gives them candy.”   ~








Martin Luthur King Day:
Gathering in the Name of a New Dream

  In a reminder that “The Dream” of Martin Luther King is not just about black people – and is never finished -- several thousand rallied Monday at Ashland’s Historic Armory and rainy Plaza to cheer for the rights of any oppressed peoples, including gays and the homeless.

   “It’s an injustice I kept quiet about…but then my teenaged daughter asked me (in response to the California ballot measure banning gay marriage) what gives people the right to dictate the happiness of others,” said keynote speaker Maria Underwood, development director for La Clinica.

   “She’s right. It’s wrong, wrong, wrong. We tell ourselves this kind of thing takes time, but 45 states, including Oregon have banned gay marriage,” said Underwood, to a cheering crowd. “These laws are all the ugly face of discrimination.”

   The crowd at the popular annual event was entertained by an array of break dancers, rock groups, spoken word artists, Indian drumming, the Ballet Folklorico Ritmo Alegre, historic film clips of the assassinated civil rights icon and host D.L Richardson, communications professor at Southern Oregon University, who sang (a cappella) “His Eye is on the Sparrow (and I Know He Watches Me).”

   A pointed skit by Crater High School’s Crater Renaissance Academy portrayed how casually and cruelly kids toss around the epithets “that’s so gay” (or “sick” or “dyke”) – and portrayed one boy trying to tell his parents about a gay boyfriend but “I’m so scarred you won’t love me anymore.”

   Speakers bemoaned the devastation and death in the hemisphere’s poorest nation, Haiti, and collected food for the quake-stricken populace at the door.

   Asked if King’s Dream had been fulfilled in the 47 years since its delivery, Brittany Vixon of the SOU Black Student Union said, “Some pieces of the Dream have been done but we have a lot of work to do. I don’t know how some people can think it’s completed when California reneged on gay marriage with that popular vote.”

   Another BSU member, Marcelle Million, said, “The Dream has been accomplished but still has kinks. In my life, it’s such a beautiful, amazing thing that I live (platonically) with a white, female roommate. Today, if he were here, King would be working on gay marriage.”

   Phil Jones, an African-American from Mount Shasta, said, “A lot of the Dream has been accomplished. All kinds of opportunities are open now…Today, King would probably be seeking health care for all.”

   Phoebe Quillian of Talent, who attended a 1966 King rally at Soldier Field in Chicago, said, “I was a little girl of seven or eight and was bored with the speakers, but when he came on, I remember paying attention. He was good. If he were here today, he would be working against war and poverty and on building race relations, as he was then.”

   Bellview Elementary School Principal Michelle Zundel, an organizer of the event, noted, “Dr. King’s is a timeless message. There is always more work to do. If he were alive now, he had a lot to say about health care, non-violence and the poorest people and all of those are still current.”

   Keynoter Underwood, who has worked for Hispanic and women’s rights, said that she, as a person of color in a biracial marriage, would have been a lawbreaker in many states before the 1967 Supreme Court decision banning laws against miscegenation (interracial marriage).

   The bans on gay marriage, she noted, “are people in power telling other people they don’t matter…When we turn away from injustice, it endangers the civil rights of us all. Our constitutional guarantee is that every citizen has equal protection under law. Marriage is a fundamental right…and gays and lesbians are being harmed (by the ban).”

   After the event, the SOU Multicultural Student Union led a placard-filled march to the Plaza, where the Peace Choir sang “This Little Light of Mine (I’m Gonna Let It Shine)” and King’s stirring “I Have a Dream” speech was boomed out in full.   ~







Barry Lynn: Preventing Theocracy in the U.S.

   One of the fundamentals of democracy, the separation of church and state, is under renewed attack from the religious right and is in one of its most dangerous times, says noted author Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

   Lynn, a past guest on Nightline, Crossfire, Larry King Live – and who, to his face, was branded a “paranoid crazy” by conservative talk show host Bill O’Reilly – will speak at 7:30 p.m., Thursday at Ashland’s Unitarian Center, 4th and A Streets. It’s $10, free for students.

   Lynn, in a phone interview, faulted the Obama administration for failing on its pledge to reign in the Bush administration’s Faith-Based Initiative, which funded religious organizations, while such groups discriminate in hiring based on religious affiliation and work against gay marriage.

   “Obama may be under the illusion he can give the religious right an inch and they’ll be satisfied,” said Lynn, “but they’ll want to take 10 miles. They would prefer a theocracy, as long as they can be in control and can have a government that mirrors their religious doctrine.”

   Lynn said he’s speaking out against the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops because of their impact on the health care debate, “pushing for severe new abortion restrictions and leading the battle against same-sex marriage.”

   “We have a country that’s supposed to make laws based on shared values of the Constitution, not the values of a church,” said Lynn, who is a lawyer and a minister of the United Church of Christ.

   “The so-called cultural wars are not over; there’re just different characters doing it and we still have the threat of losing a fundamental principle of separation of church and state.”

   The American public, he said, basically understands and approves of keeping the church out of politics.

   “People like the concept but when you get specific, they like one thing and not another,” he said. “Like the display of religious symbols on public land at Christmas. They don’t understand the issue. I wouldn’t call the public asleep, just taking a nap.

   “We’ve become a nation afraid of taking bold steps forward, as we did to solve the Great Depression or bring in Medicare. This discourages politicians – and it doesn’t take much to discourage a politician.”

   Separation of church and state comes from the “establishment clause” in the Constitution – “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…” – and that, said Lynn, means the government may do nothing to help or hinder any religion.

   “In some ways this is the most dangerous time in my 30 years of doing this work, for that principle,” said Lynn. “There’s a false sense of security that this principle is safe.”

   The principle is “under attack” by the U.S. Supreme Court, he added, with Justice Kennedy sometimes supporting separation while Justice Clarence Thomas and Chief Justice John Roberts are “lost causes who don’t get it and if they get it, don’t want it.”

   Lynn will discuss upcoming Supreme Court cases on a large cross in the Mojave National Preserve and on whether a state university can refuse funding to a campus group that bans gay members.

   Lynn, a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center, worked in the 1970s for amnesty for draft-age men who exiled themselves in other countries during the Vietnam War. He was legislative counsel for the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union and has headed Americans United since 1992. He is the author of “Piety and Politics: The Right-Wing Assault on Religious Freedom.” (2006)   ~








John Javna: Food & a Sense of Neighborhood

   Under the name of the Ashland Food Project, a friendly army of 50 volunteers has begun collecting food from some 400 Ashland families and taking it to the Ashland Emergency Food Bank, resulting in an “absolutely amazing” landslide of  3,350 pounds of food Saturday, its first dropoff day.

   “They’ve filled our (intake) shelf six times already,” said AEFB president Ann Marie Hutson. “This allows us to increase by one item of what we give families and that’s especially important in summer when kid don’t get school lunches. This is such a gift. It’s absolutely amazing.”

   Organized over the last six months under the slogan, “You want to help, we want to make it easy,” the AFP has pioneered a system which is not an occasional “food drive for the needy,” emphasizes John Javna, one of its leaders, but rather is an ongoing system for “making sure our neighbors eat well.”

   Says Javna, a leader several years ago in the creation of the ScienceWorks Hands-On Museum, “This might be the first system like this in the nation, with a neighborhood-based infrastructure to share food, based on the idea that we’re all responsible for taking care of our neighbors.”

   Picking up food Saturday on Faith Street with their little red wagon, twins Curtis and Adam Jones, volunteer organizers for their neighborhood, said they donate one dollar of their $5 weekly allowance to buy food for AFP, then two dollars go to savings and two more dollars for spending.

   Their mom, Liz Jones, explained that neighbors who become donors agree to buy one item a week, then the volunteers pick it up (at a time arranged by email) every eight weeks. Every 300 donors mean an addition of one ton of food a month – and the AFP is aiming for at least 900 donors.

   Joanie Keller-Hand, who donated to their wagon, says she’s always given food but “this is a systematic, easier way and I wanted to be involved. We’ve lived on this street a long time and can’t say we know all the neighbors. This brings the neighborhood together.”

   The boys had filled their wagon with imperishables such as peanut butter, crackers, corn muffin mix, pasta, corn flakes, pasta sauce, chili beans, three bean salad in the can and canned ham.

   “It’s pretty fun. You get to meet people around the neighborhood and help the community,” says Curtis Jones. Adam Jones adds, “It feels good.”

   Because of the deep recession – and the 42 percent increase in families served by the Food Bank compared to May a year ago – the donations are much needed, says Hutson, and they are carted away, not just by poor or needy people but by the “working poor or recently unemployed, some of whom come here by bus and some in their Mercedes.”

   She adds, “Most just lost their job. The pay stopped. All they need to obtain a box of food here, once a month, is proof that they live in Ashland or Talent. Even if they’re just passing through, they get four items. We want them to know we’re here.”

      The Food Bank has relied on donations from church congregations, individuals and bags distributed by the Postal Service, the latter bringing in about 18 tons a year. Javna predicts AFP, by the end of the year, will be bringing in 5 tons each time.

   The AFP’s goals (www.ashlandfoodproject.com) go way beyond food and into building a neighborhood-based sense of community and modeling a system of social sustainability that can be used by other cities, says Javna.

   “It’s creating a neighborhood consciousness. You get to know each other. It should have no stigma about giving food to the needy,” says Javna. “It comes from neighbors wanting each other to eat well, not just a one-time impulsive act of largesse – and it doesn’t ask too much of anyone.”

   Volunteer neighborhood organizer Louis Plummer says the slogan “It takes a village” has just been a bunch of words “but now, I’ve got I’ve got it, that you’re taking care of everyone. It’s incredible, like getting a Christmas present for someone and you got the right thing and you know they’re going to love it.”

   Sally and Steve Russo, AFP coordinators for their neighborhood on upper Morton, said almost everyone they canvassed was receptive to giving food and many thanked them for doing it. Those who weren’t going to be home on pickup day either emailed that they placed the food out front or brought it to the Russo’s house, they say.

   Jordan Pease, director of the Rogue Valley Metaphysical Library in Ashland, said he helped organize AFP because “I was attracted to the community building. It’s going to bring people together and give us an experience of altruism that’s not ordinarily accessible to us.

   “It inspires people to volunteer and give more,” Pease noted. “Community is important not because we face a challenging future and these efforts give people the opportunity to be part of the solution

   The AFP needed cloth market bags to leave with donors and, says Javna, a prominent Ashland business owner stepped up and donated the money for the first 2,000 bags.

   “In Ashland,” says Javna, “you can do amazing thins because people want to support good causes. There’s a hunger for a stronger sense of neighborhood, but people haven’t known how to realize it. Everything in our culture works against it – shopping, commuting, television. We’re all behind our screens and something is missing.

   “This may give people a way to explore and fulfill that longing.”   ~







Mary Landberg: Fear Means Go

After digging herself out of many of life’s “familiar tragedies” – divorce, death, foreclosure, the loss of dreams – Ashland hospice nurse Mary Landberg decided to do something positive with all she’d learned: publish a book of her poems and photographs, which she dramatizes in readings, with hopes of inspiring others to transcend fear and live their highest visions.

   The just-published book, “Fear Means Go,” carries a cover shot of Landberg standing in a foggy Emigrant Lake, wet in a negligee and brandishing a samurai sword.

   “It symbolizes femininity with the power to overcome,” says Landberg, after a spirited rehearsal of the title poem at Bohemia Gallery, on A Street in Ashland, where she will do a reading and book signing at 7 p.m. Thursday [March 25], on her 50th birthday.

   The poems aren’t the lyrical or metaphorical stuff you may think of as verse. It’s direct, gritty and naked in its emotions, whether about dreary house tasks or broken hearts.

   About breakups, Landberg writes: “On Christmas morning / without festivity / he simply said, ‘I’ve lost my desire to adore you.’ / These shoulders of mine / these shoulders that carry order / crashed to the linoleum / with the weight of his brutal truth.”

   Of Emily, one of her two teen daughters, she pens, “Secret hand signals / giggle codes / silvery rubber banded smiles / Piccadilly pink lip gloss smeared on my cheek / Nothing between us and the moon / Oh, the ease of loving Emily.”

   Of rebirth after pain, Landberg writes, “You aren’t seeing yourself / your real self / You may never have been witness to / the real you. / No, not the reflection / you glance at / in the rear view mirror / as you drive home from work.”

   Landberg says her inspiration came from 13 years in a women’s circle called “Into the Mystery,” where she and others learned to “crack your self open to your self and bear witness to our pain, grief, joy and bliss, finding the divine feminine and learning unconditional love and acceptance.”

   The experience with other women taught her that “we’ve all been there, that place where you’re not good enough, smart enough, pretty enough, loveable enough” and that, Landberg says, is life’s big lesson – that it comes from you.

   “We want to be loved unconditionally for who we are, but we don’t show up in the world authentically. We come as someone else,” says Landberg. “If we stand before the world with all the pain, judgments, choices fully exposed for everyone to inspect, who would be left standing before us? Most people wouldn’t take that risk, out of fear of rejection, but those left standing would be the ones who love you.”

   Landberg has cut a CD of her book, accompanying herself on classical guitar. She’s presenting a workshop on “living fearlessly and authentically.” Ashland pianist and filmmaker Gary Halliburton is planning a movie on her work and Ashland publisher Steve Scholl will handle book distribution.

   The poems seem to explore the shadow and fire of every modern relationship problem and its impact on inner learning and growth – the teasing of a lustful married man, the decision to stay together for the kids, the perpetual furrow on the brow of an unloving lover’s face, the first day you realize you don’t hurt anymore.

   That long-sought finding of oneself is penned in a verse, “Blessings / to the foggy mirrors / and broken roads / that led me here…To skipping like a little girl / goldie locks flying / above my head. / Don’t need eyes open / to see / the mystery / embracing me.”

   The theme of the book, Landberg notes, is the immense potential each person has to move beyond jobs, relationships and visions that have died and “live fearless, authentic lives, saying yes to dreams – don’t wait!”

   A former marathoner and personal trainer – and now a hospice R.N. with a master’s degree in public health, Landberg says she has learned a big lesson from the dying, one she has taken to heart.

   “I always ask them what advice they have for me. They all say the same thing. Don’t postpone happiness, live fully now, love often.”   ~







Harve Bennett: Saving Star Trek as We Know It

   Reflecting on his years as producer, director and writer of the “Star Trek” movies, Harve Bennett of Ashland says the success of the series comes from the simple fact that it’s been optimistic about humanity in a long period of pessimism and mostly dark and violent Hollywood movies.

   Bennett, 79, retired to Ashland with his wife Jani after an extraordinarily long, 65-year career that began as a star at age 10 on the popular radio show “Quiz Kids,” took him through producer-director posts at CBS, ABC, Universal and Screen Gems, then in 1980 found him taking on the Star Trek movie series.

   “They chose me for Quiz Kids because I had good academics and I had red hair and freckles and looked like Huck Finn instead of a studious kid,” said Bennett, who grew up in Chicago as the son of a “sob sister” journalist Kate Sussman, who interviewed the likes of Al Capone and Amelia Earhart.

   After Army service during the Korean War and with a degree from UCLA film school, Bennett at age 26 became producer of the Johnny Carson Show, then, in the 1960s, ABC vice president for programming, developing “Batman,” “Peyton Place,” “The Fugitive” and “Bewitched.”

   He produced the TV hit “Mod Squad” and at Universal, produced the series, “Rich Man, Poor Man” then “The Six-Million Dollar Man” and “The Bionic Woman.”

   At Paramount, he took on the job of producing four “Star Trek” movies. The legend at that point had only three years on television and a poorly received first movie, so Bennett’s “Star Trek II, the Wrath of Khan,” became credited with “saving Star Trek as we know it,” according to Entertainment Weekly.

   “I was called into the office in my first week at Paramount and asked what I thought of the first Star Trek movie. I said it was boring. They asked if I could do better for less than $45 million (the amount of the first movie). I said yes and I can make four or five movies for that. They said ‘do it.’”

   Bennett holed up with all 76 episodes of the original “Star Trek” television series, watching them on 16mm film over three months and emerging with plot ideas, starting with the re-emergence of arch-villain Khan (Ricardo Montalban), who (on TV) was thought safely out of the way on a prison planet.

   Bennett followed with “The Search for Spock,” “The Voyage Home” and “The Final Frontier,” together grossing over $1 billion. At the same time in the 1980s, Bennett produced “The Jesse Owens Story,” winning the NAACP Image Award and “A Woman Called Golda,” the Emmy-winning story of the Israeli premier, played by legendary Ingrid Bergman.

   Bennett tells the story of trying to land Bergman, who was then dying of cancer, for the role -- and of the last moments of her life’s work, filming her walking across a Chicago street. She flubbed her line on one shot, then stumbled on the next shot, then poignantly explained to the crew her difficulty.

   “She said ‘if I say the line, then the picture (her career) is over,” notes Bennett.  She died four months later.

   Bennett’s work as “producer” overlapped with many tasks, including raising money for projects, writing or re-writing scripts, creating picture concepts and hanging over the film editor’s shoulder, giving a “fresh eye” to the process.

   “A producer is what it says on a t-shirt my son gave me,” he notes. “It says ‘I make things happen.’”

   Bennett became close with the original “Star Trek” cast, noting that Spock, the Vulcan, was pure intellect, Bones, the doctor, was pure emotion and Captain Kirk resolved the gap between them. On the set, he recalls, Bones (DeForest Kelley) was a “kind healer who kept the big ego’s from tearing each other apart” while Kirk (William Shatner) was “a study in being the matinee idol, brilliant, energetic and rather full of himself.”

   While Bennett grew up in an age of heroes and hope surrounding World War II, this faded by the 1960s -- and Star Trek represented an exception to the fact that “we live in very unpleasant times and contemporary movies are not helping. They’re a big downer. Who would want to make a big movie about the apolalypse coming in 2012, saying ‘let’s kill the earth?’”

   Despite his creds as a producer-director in a range of films and TV series, Bennett says, after the “Star Trek decade” of the 80s, he found himself typecast as a franchise film producer -- responding in the 90s by freelancing several TV movies and series.

   Bennett is enjoying “semi-retirement” as he calls it, will celebrate his 80th birthday in August and, in his home will sit for commentaries to be put at the end of remastered DVDs of many of his TV series.   ~







Lawrence Krauss:
Evolution, Dark Matter & Fear

   There are enough atoms in our atmosphere to assure that every breath you takes contains at least five atoms that were in the last breath exhaled by Julius Caesar when he was assassinated in 44 BCE -- so says Lawrence Krauss, popular author and defender of science, who speaks Thursday at Southern Oregon University on “An Atom from Oregon: Human Origins from the Beginning to the End of Time.”

   Krauss, who was on Barack Obama’s Science Policy Committee in the 2008 campaign, likes to connect audiences to the cosmos by showing the evolution of humanity, not just back to Africa but to the times, billions of years ago, when the atoms that are in us now were part of stars.

   “Every atom in us was once in an exploding star and it’s likely that atoms in your right hand and atoms in your left hand are from different exploding stars,” said Krauss in phone interview.

   Calculating the atoms in Caesar’s last breath is hard science, he adds, based on the huge number of atoms in a liter of air, uniformly mixed in the atmosphere over 22 centuries and giving every person on earth five to 10 of those atoms in the inhale you take right now.

   The same goes for the atoms of Joan of Arc, Da Vinci, Socrates, Jesus, John F. Kennedy and all the dinosaurs, which gives us a highly interactive planet, but one, he notes, where “it’s necessary to keep on defending science - and lots of people still see science, especially evolution, as a threat.”

   Krauss, a PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, now on the faculty of Arizona State University, is a frequent voice in TV news and New York Times editorials, speaking against intelligent design -- a mission he came to in testifying before the Ohio School Board in 2004, before it voted against requiring anti-evolution criticism in schools.

   Intelligent design is backed by no evidence or scientific papers, while evolution “happened and has been proved,” said Krauss, adding that, controversies aside, American students are “way behind in science” and need to stay on track with it.

   “It’s remarkable in the U.S., the reaction against evolution,” said Krauss. “Some view it as an attack on God, without understanding it. It’s out of fear” and is driven by the fact that the US has no state religion, so private churches need to “create excitement and interest to exist.”

   On the other end of the spectrum, Krauss uses hard science to say that alien spacecraft, while creating a big buzz, simply are not possible because of the laws of physics and the vast distances between worlds.

   On the other hand, the increasing discoveries of earth-like planets outside our solar system -- now in the hundreds -- “give hope for life elsewhere, but if there’s life, it doesn’t mean it’s intelligent and the chances are extremely slim we’ll ever have contact with them.”

   Krauss lauds “Star Trek” as a “wonderful hook to get people over their intimidation by science.” He has written books, “The Physics of Star Trek” and “Beyond Star Trek” which demonstrate that the scifi series and movies are “not that good science” but can be a springboard to understanding the real stuff.

   The amazing flow of deep space images from the Hubble telescope, he notes, “transport me through time and space and bring me face-to-face with remarkable concepts we can lose sight of  when we’re working every day. Every dot out there is not just a star but a galaxy containing hundreds of billions of stars and possibly long-dead civilizations, reminding us of our place in the cosmos.”

   In his book “Hiding in the Mirror,” Krauss explores and proposes experiments to verify one of the great mysteries of the universe, dark matter, which is thought to account for most of the matter, yet can’t be detected.

   “It’s made of elemental particles that don’t emit or attract light,” he said, “and that outnumber (known subatomic particles, such as protons, neutrons, electrons) by a factor of 10...and they’re passing through us right now.”

   Krauss is on the advisory boards of the Campaign to Defend the Constitution, a group that opposes the religious right, and Scientists and Engineers for America, which promotes sound science in the U.S. government. He is co-president of the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and was termed a “public intellectual” by Scientific American.

   Krauss speaks twice at SOU -- on human origins from the beginning to the end of time, at 7 pm  Thursday in the Rogue River Room of Stevenson Union and at 3 pm, Friday in 118 Science Building on “life, the Universe and Nothing: a Cosmic Mystery Story.” The talks are free and open to the public.

   Krauss’s discussions are part of the SOU campus-wide theme series “On Being Human” - sponsored by the SOU Arts and Humanities Council, the Office of Student Affairs, the College of Arts and Sciences and the Provost’s Office.   ~






Howard Morningstar: Tantra as a Divine Path

   In our society, we think sex comes naturally and you’ll learn all you need to know to make each other happy and have an intimate, soulful and harmonious relationship -- but, say two area sex therapists, it’s more complicated than that.

   Like anything that’s important, sex takes practice, training, communication and improvement, say Ashland physician Howard Morningstar and psychologist Shavana Fineberg, who have joined forces, covering the sexual wellness spectrum from the biological to the mental and emotional.

   “In this culture, we’re given this idea that sexuality is supposed to be the ultimate bonding experience, but we’re given no idea how to reach our full potential,” says the Princeton-educated Fineberg, “so, in our work, we start again, at the beginning, learning how to use physical intimacy for emotional intimacy and increased pleasure.”

   As an M.D., Morningstar screens sexually dysfunctional patients to identify organic blocks, such as heart disease, diabetes, poor nutrition, depression, insomnia, hormone issues, potentially sex-impairing meds or past surgeries -- especially prostate or hysterectomy, which can leave patients feeling invaded and protective, he notes.

   With his wife, nurse and Rabbi Sue Morningstar, the doctor also looks for emotional trauma from poor body image or past abuse or molestation. Another impediment, for men, says Fineberg, is “pressure to perform -- I can’t imagine what that feels like.”

   As the psychologist on the team, Fineberg counsels individuals, couples and groups on three stages -- innocence, trust and discovery -- of “resetting” sexuality. Clients take the intructions home to experiment and learn from.

   “Innocence means let’s forget everything you think you know and start over,” she says. “This always beings a big smile to the face of at least one partner. It relieves us of the burden we have in our culture, that we’re supposed to be this amazing lover, even though no one ever told us how.”

   Trust, she adds, is about “surrendering to an energy that is bigger than us. It’s feeling safe for the emotions, sounds and physical sensations that come up and feeling comfortable exposing your vulnerability.”

   The third part, discovery, is not about telling people how to be sexual with each other, says Fineberg, but rather “teaching them tools to use in rediscovering what works for them.”

   The Harvard-educated Morningstar uses a wide range of medical and alternative strategies, including herbalism and nutrition and notes that being a doctor involves passing on the “wisdom and guidance of ourselves as beings made in the divine image” and overcoming pervasive culltural messages of shame around sex.

   “Sex is a wonderful thing, to be shared,” adds Fineberg.

   “But most people know that only as an idea, not a reality they experience,” says Morningstar, adding that many of his patients are sexually active into their 80s and 90s -- and there’s no biological reason we all shouldn’t be.

   Sexuality is a health issue, both for biological and mental health, they say, and taken in the big picture, becomes an issue of society’s health.

   “We should stay juicy and vital, regardless of age. But many people are depressed or overworked. Many have prostate or heart surgery or hysterectomy,” notes the Harvard-educated Morningstar.

   “Here they are, feeling their whole insides were ripped out; they don’t feel whole, haven’t recovered. It’s a quality of life issue, because if you’re sexually active, you will live longer and better. If you’re sexually fulfilled, you’re going to be happy and vibrant.

   Adds Fineberg, “Studies show that men who have more orgasms, live longer. Issues around sex start coming out in later life. When the kids are gone, you have more time to explore. You learn how to communicate what you like and don’t like.”

   In her counseling, Fineberg sees that a lot of people don’t know how to touch, explore, communicate or laugh during sex -- skills she encourages and which are being taught as “western Tantra,” a form of spiritual enlightenment that employs “weaving of union” between lovers, says Morningstar.

   “What I teach isn’t just sexual. It’s sharing pleasure, intimacy and affection,” says Fineberg. “You receive pleasure from your beloved partner. It makes people happier. It makes it safe to surrender.”

   Speaking of the Tantric base of their work, Morningstar notes it’s contrary to the common religious idea of denying sex as a pathway to God -- and Fineberg adds, “It’s coming closer to God.”
  
   Both take insurance and are trained by Charles Muir of the Hawaii-based Source School of Tantra Yoga. Fineberg practices in Grants Pass and Ashland, 541-846-0590. Morningstar’s office is in Ashland -- www.morningstarhealingartsnet.    ~








Dot Fisher-Smith: Being Your Own Authority

  Feisty, smart, tiny and relentless, Dot Fisher-Smith over many decades has become a regional legend showing how much of a difference one thoughtful, committed citizen can make in protests over nuclear energy, the draft, salvage logging, nuclear power and women’s rights.

   The 82-year old Ashland woman, a noted artist and leader of women’s retreats, is now the subject of an hour-long documentary, to be shown at film festivals and possibly on educational or cable channels, say its director Pat Somers and producer Willow Denker.

   The movie, “Dot: An Ordinary Life, an Extraordinary Person,” premiers at 7 p.m., Oct. 16 at Havurah Shir Hadash in Ashland and will include a showing of her art. Tickets are $15, available at Paddington Station, Music Coop and Treehouse Books.

   The film, says Somers is a personal story of a political activist, Zen student, mom, feminist and  an ordinary person who tries to follow the model of Gandhi by living one’s highest ideals at every moment. At the same time, it’s a documentary that captures the history of a transformative period of the 60s and the latter 20th century, when the Boomer vision of change exploded across the country.

   “She’s an example of how to live your life in ways that are consistent with what you believe,” says Somers.

   “The means must be consistent with the ends,” says Fisher-Smith. “That’s straight from Gandhi....You study yourself, pay attention and have an ordinary life.”

   Far from being a charismatic leader with a fiery agenda, Fisher-Smith tries to follow the ancient Zen dictum of “chop wood, carry water,” which means, in her words, “People tell me I’m a model for them and that how I live my life is inspiring, but what I do is bumble along, minute by minute. When I’m hungry, I eat, when I have errands, I get on my bike, when I’m sleepy I...resist going to bed,” she laughs.

   “That’s what’s inspiring,” says Somers, “that you’re not perfect. The film doesn’t say you’re the greatest person in the world. You make mistakes. You go on. You’ve been doing it all your life.”

   Her most famous and notorious moment came when she was photographed, in 1996, after the Salvage Logging Rider, at Croman Corp. in Ashland, chained by the neck to a logging truck - a photo that flashed around the world, evoking no shortage of sympathy, humor and support for the archetypal “little old lady” raging non-violently against the machine.

   “The picture made people stop and think. I had people come up to me and thank me and say it’s what made them get informed about the rape of the ancient forests and the heedlessness of the timber industry,” she said.

   The film gets its bearings in segregation-era Louisiana, where Dot, a Jew, was raised, vowing as a little girl that, “I knew segregation was wrong and that grown-ups were crazy and I was not going to grow up to be like that. That was my litany, my mantra and I did it.”

   The movie traces her life through an initial normal track, working in New York, being a Foriegn Service wife in Iran, having children in Mill Valley, Calif. in 1955, then radicalization in 1967 with, yoga, LSD, wilderness backpacking and draft protests and fasting at the Oakland Induction Center, earning her and other protesters 10 days in jail.

   “In San Francisco, the anti-war and anti-draft movments were the pulse,” says Fisher-Smith. “It was simple; if people wouldn’t sign up to kill people, there wouldn’t be wars.”

   Like so many of the group loosely classified as boomer-peacenik-hippies, Fisher-Smith dropped out of political work, seeking inner peace and simplicity with the back-to-the-land movement of the early 70s, buying land near Wolf Creek and living and farming communally.

   The early 80s saw Fisher-Smith move to Ashland, engaging expanded activism with the founding of Peace House here and protests at Lawrence Livermore Lab, the Trident submarine base in Washington state, nukes at Diablo Canyon, missiles at Vandenberg Air Force Base, nuclear triggers at Litton Industries, defense materials at Precision Castparts in Portland, the White Train in Vancouver, Wash. and others.

   She trekked Nepal, started non-violence training for protestors, guided women’s groups in empowerment and overcoming the wounds of domestic violence -- all the while pretended to no special wisdom or answers to the complex problems of modern life, says, Denker, who hatched the idea of doing a film on Dot and began taping interviews in the 80s.

   “I thought, why not a documentary on her? There’s something about her,” says Denker. “I’m not the only one who appreciates her. She was so present with the medium (video). The movie is timeless and universal.”
  
   The movie doesn’t shy away from life’s hard parts -- the hard work of parenting in tumultuous times, a house fire that took everything, the recent death of her son.

   It tells the story of how Dot and John, a dozen years after falling in love, but not able to do anything about it, finally, 50 years ago, cross paths and realize their hopes for a life together, though John, an architect, readily complains that his magnetic wife gets all the attention and press for projects, campaigns and consciousness-raising sessions they created together.

   Dot stresses that the movie, which has soundbites and no narration, “is not my idea” -- and John lauds it, noting, “I love it and was very touched. It shows all the wonderful things of this woman I fell in love with, but I was initially furious it showed only her public side. There’s so much more.

   “She lives ‘beginner’s mind’ and when you speak to her, she always comes from the basic things, down to earth, a freshness that maintains the enthusiasm and humor of youth, despite the ills of the world.”

   Dot agrees, noting, “I’m very pragmatic and minimalist. At the heart of it, what inspires people is that I’m my own authority. I’ve never been conventional. I don’t look to any outside authority. That’s what everyone wants to be.”   ~









Divining the Cascadian Mind:
A Spiritual Life We Call Our Own

   An American Religious Identification Survey in 1990 pointed to the Pacific Northwest as home of the greatest number of people who, when asked their religious preference, said “none.” A new ARIS survey says that number his increased in Oregon from 18 to 24 percent and in Washington from 15 to 25 percent, giving rise to this region being called the home of the “unchurched.”

   However, the latest ARIS survey, by Trinity College in Connecticut, notes the Northwest has slipped  into second place behind New England, where Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine all lead Oregon and Washington as home of the “nones.”

   According to the just-published “Cascadia; the Elusive Utopia.” (Ronsdale Press, Douglas Todd, ed.), a lot of these “nones” in the Pacific Northwest are actually very spiritual, walking a path of their own making, but not into organized religions and churches.   

   Biology Prof. Mark Shibley of Southern Oregon University, wrote the lead essay called “The Promise and Limits of Secular Spirituality in Cascadia.”

   “This region is different. The people here are not as connected to religious institutions,” he says.

   The alternative spirituality here shows itself in two main ways, Shibley notes – “nature spirituality,” such as you see in the secular environmental movement and the more well-known New Age spirituality, where the gaze is shifted inward.

   Cascadia is considered to be Oregon, Washington and British Columbia, a region noted for its independence -- a spirit that spawned the State of Jefferson movement in the mid-twentieth century. It tried to make a new state of Southern Oregon and Northern California, an area removed from all major centers of population and political power.

   With a typical Cascadian independence, Shibley, a native Oregonian, says he’s not an adherent of either New Age or nature religions. But he did come of age in the 1970s and “I’ve hiked the wild areas and stood on top of mountains reading ‘The River Why’ and Gary Snyder and Barry Lopez and I do know the mountain-top epiphany.”

   In its politics as well as its religion, Cascadia, says Shibley, presents “an anti-government sensibility. The world out there is pretty screwed up and we want to be left alone to do our thing.”

   Our sense of nature spirituality goes back to pioneers and ranchers who didn’t have or want a lot of churches around them, says Shibley, and it got extended and shifted by Baby Boomers who “settled in the hills and became part of that experiment and invented this new culture that is less exploitative of resources and wants to care for that resource base for generations to come.”

   In his essay, Shibley singles out Chant Thomas, a longtime resident of the Little Applegate who describes, in a time of despair, hugging a big Ponderosa pine, which he intuitively recognized as a “sacred tree.” Other people followed, establishing the spot as a “place of power” deserving of protection of the “new natives” who love and honor it.

   The Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, aside from any ecological justification, must be honored as wilderness in the spiritual sense, writes Shibley, because “the idea of wilderness…is the spiritual core of an emergent new culture.”

   To flesh out these Cascadian concepts, we interviewed Ashland residents for whom nature is a key part of what they know as spirituality.  They are:

   Steve Scholl – writer and lecturer on spirituality, leader of tours to Morocco and to sacred music festivals – see www.imagine-adventures.com -- native Oregonian.

    Aylah Hallel – Chief Priestess of Rowan Tree Pagan Ministries in Ashland.

   Dominick Della Sala, Ph.D. – chief scientist, National Center for Conservation Science and Policy, Ashland. Raised Catholic in Brooklyn, N.Y.

   Claire Krulikowski – Author of  “Moonlight on the Ganga” and “Living a Radical Peace.” Does copywriting and event P.R., lives in Talent.

1. In your life, is nature a source of the spiritual or sacred?
   Steve – Yes. Nature is part of my spiritual practice. It’s not central but is an essential part. To live and breathe in Southern Oregon and in a matter of seconds to be on a trail in the woods away from the daily grind. I’ve lived most of my life where nature is accessible. Nature, rather than a big building, becomes my monastery, my sanctuary.
   Aylah -- Yes, I was raised in the mountain(s). I was already hopelessly in love with nature. I had already spent my childhood…climbing trees, hiking, swimming, and camping.  To me, nature is incredibly sacred. Out in nature is really the only place I feel in my heart that there is something ‘bigger.’ Because I feel that nature is god (Mother Goddess Gaea) I feel that the elements of nature - the sky, trees, animals, mountains, rocks, streams and rivers - are her keepers- looking after her (and me), presiding over the ecosystem, causing balance in our atmosphere, and perpetuating life as we know it.
   Dominick – Absolutely. There are lots of different sources. Nature is the core. It’s earth-centered, an awareness of things greater than me, that science can’t explain.
    Claire – It has been. It’s not predominant. It’s a lot of why I chose to live in Washington and Oregon. I learned of the little beings that lived around there, entities I considered wood nymphs. It was a life force. I had healings in nature. Once I was sick and was going to die. I hugged this tree and asked it to take the condition from me and in moments I was relieved. I realized there were spirits beyond what appears as the material.

2. Have you experienced some kind of opening, epiphanies or mystical awareness at a particular point in your life?
   Steve – I’ve had dozens of moments I would call ecstasy or deeply felt times in nature, where it’s blurred between the identified self and what’s beyond it, a sense of becoming one with existence and not encased in a head and body. Once on a walk, I felt I was gone. The Sufis call it annihilation. I and the trees were not there. For a brief moment, I felt gone into identification with all creatures. The barriers between subject and object were gone and it was something beautiful, magical.
   Aylah – My family and I camped a lot in remote places, many times we had to hike into where we camped – I had always, from a very young age, felt that something was watching over me while we were out there – I always assumed it was the nature spirits. I always felt loved and cared for while I was out camping and hiking. One day I was at Lithia Park doing a Silence Meditation. When I finished and opened my eyes, all of nature was ‘talking’ to me – the rocks, the water, the trees all seem to be speaking a language I understood, telling me that they loved and appreciated my existence and they were grateful for their own existence.
   Dominick – I experience it every time I’m in nature. It opens me up to all possibilities. It allows the spirit to connect with persona, every time I’m in nature.
   Claire – In India, I kept being called to the Ganges, the sacred river. I was a hard-headed businesswoman at the time. Anytime I listened, it always led me to the river and I would see a lot of the meaning behind what I was seeing and trusting that kind voice.

3. The Pacific Northwest, according to surveys, has the greatest number of people, often described as “spiritual, not religious,” who don’t embrace church or organized religion as their primary focus. If this is true for you, why? 
   Steve – Yes. I’m not affiliated with any community. I was but I kept finding it more and more of a straight jacket. It became unhealthy. I’m in the category of “unchurched.” I study religions and am sympathetic to Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism but these are so connected to pre-modern times. The new spirituality is post-denominational. Oregon might be a bellwether of that. It’s seen around the world. People see that it (organized religion) doesn’t speak to the spiritual depths. Those of us on this sort of lonely path find ways to connect with each other in non-authoritarian, non-hierarchical, non-sexist ways.  It will be interesting to see if the unchurched can provide a sense of community. Those of us who left it miss the community and ritual.
   Aylah -- I don't think that a person has to go to a building (church) or come to God through any one person (a pastor or a priest).  The trees have always been my temple.  Even at a very young time in my life when I did go to church or seek advice from a pastor or priest – I would always go climb a tree or sit in the woods and let the dirt and trees and animals tell me what they think.
   Dominick – It’s true. I was born and raised Catholic. I felt more connected in nature than in church. It’s not to say that people can’t get connected in church. My personal spiritual connection is nature-based.
   Claire – It’s true. I was raised Catholic on the East Coast. At an early age, I remember chewing my nails as the priest talked and would focus on other things. I knew it wasn’t the truth or the whole truth and that religion limited God instead of expressed God.

4. The Pacific Northwest also has a tradition of being non-traditional, of being the place for people who love independence and the right to think and live as they please. Does the freedom to define religion for yourself play a role in your being here? How? 
   Steve – Yes, it plays a role in my life, moving away from the institutions because of the lack of freedom. Institutional leaders tell you this is how you have to believe and that doesn’t work for me. Being in this place makes it easier. The more unchurched spiritual quests people have, the more they say this is normal. A lot of people are anxious to leave the church, although you still have a social life there.
   Aylah -- I think so – especially in Ashland. I am pretty much out about my spiritual beliefs and no one seems to care. I teach others Paganism and Magic and feel perfectly free to live the way I choose. This area is such a melting pot of religious and spiritual beliefs, and there seems to be a lot of respect for each other and our beliefs.
   Dominick – Yes, it does.  It’s important raising my daughter to be tolerant of all religious beliefs. We take her to church, synagogue, Muslim and Buddhist. It’s important to have an independent nature and religious freedom and this region does.
   Claire – I ran as fast as I could to get away from the East Coast mentality. I sensed that other places and thought systems would be less fault-finding and into victimization. It’s the way they were taught religion and family. You don’t find that here.

5. In your life, how do you experience your communion, oneness or wholeness with nature? What do you do and what is it like?
   Steve – To be quiet, still, to stop the incessant chatter of the mind by a stream in the woods, instead of being in a building – that’s a huge part of it.
   Aylah -- I feel the closest when I am out in nature. I like to camp, hike, swim, picnic, and just about anything outdoors. With coven rituals, we spend part of the year doing rituals indoors. As soon as the warmer weather comes, the community is very excited to get outdoors and start doing our rituals in the wild.
    Dominick – It’s as simple as being in the garden, dealing with the day-to-day stress of how we destroy Mother Nature. As long as I can focus on the spiritual connection with things…that’s what I do.
   Claire – It’s a matter of being aware and courteous to nature around me, putting seed and water out for animals on the hot days and on the first day of the year. I spend a lot of time with animals and walking in the breeze and the trees. It’s very refreshing, inspiring and healing.

6. What is it about the Pacific Northwest that keeps you here, that you couldn’t find anywhere else?

   Steve – We’re interested in different cultures and aren’t wedded to this spot. Here, what comes is the sense that this is home, my place I’m identified with. This is natural, the love for the land in which you live. I treasure it. It’s absolutely perfect, a beautiful spot. This is our place.

   Aylah -- I love the mountains and the trees. I love Ashland, because it's nestled into the mountains – a person can look in any direction and see mountains, and many times while driving, deer and other wild animals will cross in front.

   Dominick – I came here in 1998 as one of the team that identified the Klamath-Siskiyou as one of the Top 10 Temperate Conifer Regions in the world, because of the old growth forest and the exceptional plant and wildlife. I’m here because it’s a special place to science and on a lot of different levels.

   Claire – The beauty of nature and the hillsides. If I were anywhere else it would be near the ocean. The East Coast is flat and doesn’t have that kind of strong natural energy I feel here.

PERCENT OF “NONES” BY STATE

Vermont        34
New Hampshire    29
Wyoming        28
Maine            25
Washington        25
Oregon            24
Nevada        24
Idaho            23
Massachusetts        22
Montana        21

…AND ON THE OTHER END OF THE SPECTRUM:
Alabama        11
Oklahoma        11
Tennessee        9
Louisiana        8
North Dakota        7









Adyashanti: Disengaging Personal Will

  For people struggling toward spiritual enlightenment, noted author and meditation teacher Adyashanti reassured about 800 people in Ashland that it’s a natural process that winds through a thicket of ego games and fears -- but arrives with a “diminishing of personal will” and a “very beautiful realization of our own emptiness and the oneness of all things.”

   One of the top-selling spiritual writers in America, Adyashanti, didn’t offer a rose garden to any of the 400 seekers who attended his Monday and Tuesday evening satsang, followed by question-and-answers at Temple Emek Shalom.

   As people grow spiritually, he said, “the personal will really starts diminishing startlingly (but) the driving force of the ego is very powerful and gets you to do a lot of things and achievements…and when (enlightenment) starts happening you realize ego has run almost all of one’s life, one way or the other.”

   A long-time practitioner of Zen in early years, Adyashanti (formerly Steven Gray), praised meditation and living in the present and noted that the diminishing of personal will can lead some to feel joyfully awakened and others to feel “concerned they’re out of control and that can cause the mind to reengage and hold on.”

   He added, “The ego doesn’t let go of this thing called ‘my life’ very easily, unless it’s on the ego’s terms,” but the seeker will notice a lessening of earlier desires such as wanting to make the first million dollars as a key to happiness.

   “The spiritual life is about surrender and letting go,” said Adyashanti, noting that many people employ personal will in the “seeker phase – trying to storm the gates of heaven, but that won’t get you very far.”

   Some others posture as the victim, saying “I’ll never awaken or God doesn’t like me,” but this too is a form of ego and personal will, one that he himself acted out, said Adyashanti.

   He also counseled against prayers that the universe be other than it is.

   “Why aren’t my prayers answered? Because they’re not worth listening to! We want to assert ourselves against life and we only do that when we see ourselves as separate from life. It’s saying: life is threatening and I’ve carved out my little niche in life and I’m safe.” 

   Calling on Christian themes, Adyashanti said, “It’s really ‘thy will be done.’ You open your eyes and you realize it (thy will be done) was the only thing that was ever happening. But to the ego, that’s very unsatisfying. Here we are thinking of God as a much bigger version of ourselves. It’s an infantile way of living, like believing in Santa Claus.”

   “Stop your trying,” he advised. “Disengage personal will. Wherever you’re going, it’s not going to get you there. All that the universe is waiting for is that instant when personal will is disengaged.”

   Awakening, he noted, is disorienting because it’s “an influx of new energy. It’s an emptying out process” resembling the Christian idea of “not I but the Christ in me,” he said. “It’s a very beautiful, very simple, easy flow. You come in harmony with life, not separate.”

   Adyashanti is author of five self-help books, including “True Meditation,” “My Secret is Silence” and “The End of Your World.” His teachings are likened to early Zen masters of China and the Vedanta tradition of India, according to his Web site, www.adyashanti.org.   ~








Jean Houston: Making Green Lemonade
Out of Recession & Climate Change

   Far from being a total disaster, the economic crisis, energy pinch and global warming all combine to make “the greatest opportunity in human history” to reshape the world in positive ways -- and Ashland is emerging as one of the global centers of this change, says noted philosopher and author Jean Houston.

   A resident of Ashland, Houston spoke at this weekend’s Oregon Green Expo at the Medford Armory, a conclave of workshops and vendors selling and teaching new green, sustainable technologies.

   The upside of the economic and ecological crises, Houston said, is “the enormous number of efforts to discover alternate energies that are much better for us and the planet. People are responding to the crisis in new and different ways. It’s become opportunity in working clothes.”

   Addressing 150 people, most of whom are already converted to the green-sustainable movement in construction, agriculture, water resources and many other areas, Houston said the current crises are not a time for “whining,” but rather a time to see the neuroses of civilization for what they are and “know that we’re fortunate enough to realize our neuroses.”

   Though it’s in response to global upheavals, Houston said this time of rapid change calls on people to go beyond their single identity and realize that each person contains and can draw on many personae, such as healer, writer, teacher, inventor, farmer. 

   People can work as “social artists,” in this time of change, helping make a “new story” using America’s old “core story,” which she said is much like the Wizard of Oz, where Dorothy, though initially disoriented, travels a golden spiritual road to redeem lost parts of herself – her courage, brains and heart – then realizes she had them all the time.

   “The story is changing. It’s becoming a story of the profound journey of men and women working together planetarily. It’s a mythic time and what we do is going to be profoundly important, especially in this economic collapse that’s much worse than the 1930s,” Houston said.

   Houston called Ashland one of the world centers of this change, noting its theater community, on par with ancient Greece, its plethora of mind-body workers, its involved citizenry, its status as a Transition Town and a cultural and intellectual richness that enables it to present “urban opportunity in a small town setting.”

   “We’re at the end of an age. We’re at the point of such desperate need and necessity…things that couldn’t happen just three or four years ago are working now,” said Houston. “These are the times and we are the people. We don’t have a choice anymore. We live in the most interesting time in human history.”

   Houston, 72, is the author of 26 books, including “The Possible Human,” “The Search for the Beloved” and “Jump Time.” She has Ph.D’s in psychology and religion, produced a PBS special, “A Passion for the Possible” and is a consultant lecturing worldwide for the United Nations Development Program.   ~







David Zaslow: What Was Jesus Really Like?

   It’s time to end the millennia-old polarization of the “sister religions” of Judaism and Christianity by recognizing that the historical Jesus did not start Christianity but was rabbi and a Jew all his life -- and virtually all his teachings and methods were boilerplate Judaism of his day.

   That’s the message of a new book, “Roots and Branches: a Sourcebook for Understanding the Jewish Roots of Christianity, Replacement Theology and Anti-Semitism,” by Rabbi David Zaslow of Ashland’s Havurah Shir Hadash.

   In his book and five-week class, starting Nov. 16, Zaslow pursues the “re-Judaizing of Jesus,” which Time Magazine called one of “The 10 Ideas Changing the World.” It’s an idea, he notes, that is strengthening both Christianity and Judaism, diminishing anti-Semitism and promoting respect and understanding between the faiths.

   Although ancient history can be fuzzy, Zaslow says Jesus didn’t think of himself as starting a new religion, but he would have made the Top 50 list important leaders of his time in Judea -- kind of like Martin Luther King or the Dalai Lama in our day -- and would have been considered a main troublemaker by the occupying Romans, but just one of 50,000 Jews crucified to put down the rebellion.

   After 20 years of research, Zaslow outlines how Yehoshua (Jesus’ actual Jewish name) taught in the rabbinical tradition of storytelling, allegory and parable, with all teachings -- miracles, “love thy neighbor,” the Lord’s Prayer, the Beattitudes (“Blessed are the meek...”) and others traceable, verse for verse to the Old Testament or Talmud of the Jews.

   Early Christianity was virtually indistinguishable from Judaism, says Zaslow, but was shaped into a new faith chiefly by Paul, a Jew and Roman citizen, because “he wanted to bring the one God to non-Jews, but no way were they going to convert to Judaisim, this minor, monotheistic cult on the fringe of the Roman Empire, so he created this mechanism for them to access God.”

   Zaslow says his book seeks to apply historic objectivity to Matthew 27, which became the source of much tragedy for Jews by stating that “all the people” (Jews) handed Jesus over to the Romans for execution and when Pilate washed his hands of the crime, they said, “his blood be on us and on our children.”

   That makes it sound like all Jews said those words when it was likely a room full of people at most, he says, yet it has been used as the basis for centuries of pogroms against Jews -- and greatly increased the de-Judaizing of Jesus that took place through Paul and the Roman Emperor Constantine, who converted the realm to Christianity in 325 A.D.
   “It’s about the Jewishness of Jesus and the Jewish roots of Christianity, these two sister religions that have endured 2,000 years of polarization,” says Zaslow. “It’s time for a reunion on equal footing...I’m trying to reclaim Jesus for Jews.”

   Just as most Christians see Judaism as alien to their faith, Zaslow notes, so Jews will not allow any teachings of Jesus, a major and ancient Jewish voice, to be spoken in his or any synagogue, because “Jews have been the object of a lot of persecution in the name of Christianity over the millennia...right up to the 20th century.”

   In a synagogue, you will not hear, “Our Father, who art in heaven...” even though in Zaslow’s book it shows the exact words coming from Talmud: Yoma 85b -- hence his book’s title, with Talmud as root, and Gospel as branch. Scores of other “roots” are cited.

   Zaslow says he doesn’t seek to question any Christian theology, such as the Trinity or Virgin Birth, but “to celebrate the historical Jesus who lived and died as a Jew. Paul never met Jesus, but was a great marketing genius and planted the seeds of what became Christianity.

   “People think Jesus started a new religion and rejected his past, but no, he was an actively practicing Jew who went to synagogue regularly. He didn’t die because he started a new religion, but rather he died at the hands of the Romans because he was a Jew -- 50,000 Jews were crucified and he was one of them.”

   The book seeks to question other supposed religious differences, that the New Testament was created to replace the Old Testament, that either faith or works is needed to get into heaven (they are one way of life to Jews) and, he says, that the two faiths have divergent ideas about the Messiah, when both look to a Messiah’s coming or return, with a time of world peace.   ~





Alok Hsu Kwang-han:
Zen Calligraphy & Beginner’s Mind

  To execute one of those haunting, simple and beautiful Zen paintings, it’s almost best if you’re a beginner and know nothing about it, thus placing you closer to that desired state of emptiness, formlessness and presence needed to do the magic.

   So says Alok Hsu Kwang-han, a Zen master and noted artist who uses the medium -- called sumi-e -- as a way of “resting in presence and moving in emptiness,” a technique he’ll teach as “The Creativity of Non-Doing,” Oct 23 and 24 at Jackson Wellsprings in Ashland.

   “It’s a form arising directly out of formlessness, bringing us back to the source and a sense of joy in the beholder,” says Alok, who, with the help of Ashland Qigong master Darrell Bluhm, will get students in the mood of playful centeredness and “the wholeness of existence.”

   Sumi-e is traditional black ink Japanese painting that was taken to its height by Zen monks in Japan and China, says Ashland artist Liz Shepherd, an organizer of the workshop who notes she is a lifelong artist who uses Sumi-e “to help me clean the slate.”

   She adds, “You arrive at personal stillness and emptiness...and take that into the movement. It’s real awareness that comes out through the brush into making each mark, so, instead of having a goal for the painting, the mark is the goal and qualities come through that mark that are delightful, exquisite and economical, with nothing added.”

   Alok is showing his work at Adelante! Gallery and Tea House, 88 N. Main Street, Ashland, with an opening reception 4:30 to 8 on Thursday, Oct. 21. He will lecture at 6 on “A New Manifestation of Zen as Art,” which is the title of his forthcoming book. It is free and open to the public.

   Three kinds of students seem interested in practicing the Zen of painting -- “very good artists who need to break through, psychotherapists who see it as a Rorschach test and people who want to play with brushes, including people who were told by their third-grade teacher that they can’t paint,” says Alok.

   While most people may see art as something for the gifted, Alok sees it as “getting in a space where you’re playful. You very quickly get through people’s judgments about things. We sing songs. Sometimes, it’s the beginners who do best.”
   Alok, a native of China, was educated in the US in mathematics, sociology and the philosophy or religion. He published 20 books on meditation in China and they were such bestsellers, he said, that authorities in 1998 banned them, triggering his departure from China. 

   He has taught his workshop at Kunstfack Art College in Stockholm, Seattle Asian Art Museum, Naropa University in Boulder, CO, Humaniversity in Holland, Sedona Arts Center, Sun Moon Lake in Taiwan, and forthcoming at the San Francisco Asian Art Museum.

  “By being playful with not-knowing and putting aside all ideas of how to paint...I might ask you to paint the ‘energy’ of music, a Rumi poem, a partner acting like a wild animal, the sound of silence, the Lord of Chaos, your heart’s desire,” says Alok. “As your brush dances from emptiness, you will watch amazed, exuberant, and grateful. Throughout the two days, we will share our paintings in gentle and humorous ways, so that we become more relaxed and available to existence. We will have fun.”   ~








Dennis Kucinich:
Oregon as Creadle of the New Discourse

  Staying in the presidential race won’t make him president, but Rep. Dennis Kucinich believes it will give Oregon the chance to push the Democratic Party left and help it get backbone on the environment, peace and health needed to forestall another spoilermaker role for Ralph Nader.

   “Oregon is one of the cradles of the new politics and the new discourse. We have a lot of support in Oregon because peace and the environment have a lot of support here,” Kucinich told a crowd of several hundred at the Act for the Earth Conference at Southern Oregon University Sunday.

   The Ohio Democrat drew on a spiritual connection between humanity and nature as a necessary foundation for a functional society – and for world peace.

   “The us-versus-them mentality around endangered species (impacting the economy) and the disconnect from nature is what makes war and genocide possible,” said Kucinich, campaigning for his first win as a presidential candidate in the May 18 primary here.

   Pointing to the “full and frontal attack on the environment” by the Bush administration, Kucinich urged enthusiastic supporters to knock on doors, do telemarketing and believe that victory will come not at the Democratic Convention but gradually “as your work radiates across the country and encourages and empowers others.”

   Kucinich, who shifts easily into the mode of a spiritual philosopher, advised working for peace and compassion, not just in the political arena, but in one’s personal relationships -- and not to judge political opponents, as that locks them into positionality.

   “Compassion and love always open people’s hearts and without that, there is no way to have discussion.”

   Bonnie Brodersen of Ashland said, “Kucinich connects with people because he’s always out there in front working on the same issues of peace, justice and the environment and he’s not sold out to corporate interests.”

   “He professes wisdom with his heart, using a masterful mind to join his passion with the hearts of listeners,” said Ashland singer and teacher Pauline Sullivan, “Does he have a chance? Well, you change the nation one person at a time – that’s how it’s going to get done.”

   At a later conference on “spiritual politics” at Ashland Hills Inn, Kucinich chided presumptive Democratic nominee John Kerry for soft-pedaling hard issues – saying Kerry can’t win, or cut into Nader’s base, by shying away from strong stands that would contrast him with the incumbent

   “The Democratic Party has no compass and no content and we can provide that,” Kucinich said. “If they’re afraid of Nader, the solution is – why don’t they adopt his principles – sustainability, corporate accountability, peace and health care – and prove they can still offer real choices?”

    Speaking with Kucinich, authors and spiritual teachers Wes Nisker and James Twyman echoed the need for a spiritual underpinning to the nation’s political life.

   “We’re talking about spiritual, not religious,” said Twyman. “To define that, religious people believe in hell and spiritual people have been there. They’ve been through personal crises and emerged with the understanding that we’re all in this together and have to move constructively and courageously – and that might include praying, not just for your friends, but for Bush, too, as long as he’s in there, which I hope isn’t long.”

   Nisker, radical left radio talk-jock in San Francisco during the Vietnam War and author of “Crazy Wisdom,” said the spiritual approach to politics includes a regime change among the gods, allowing respect for all deities.

   “I don’t deny Bush’s faith and deity, but what worries me is he’s promoting that particular deity and using it in his decision-making,” said Nisker, adding that, although socialism may not work on a national scale, we would do well to follow Gandhi’s teaching to practice it on the village level.

   Kucinich lauded Oregon’s long, but now vanished tradition of progressive politics among Republicans, noting that even the “big tent” of the Democratic party has been “purchased by corporate interests.”

   Nevertheless, he said, “I’m going to be at the picnic and sometimes I’m the one who brings the ants.”   ~






Robert Meeropol: Creating a Green Scare

  His parents, the “atom spies” Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, were executed during the Red Scare of the early fifties – and now Robert Meeropol wants to raise awareness that similar tactics are creating a “Green Scare,” which he sees as the lumping of eco-radicals under the heading of terrorism.

   In a talk at Rogue Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Ashland, Meeropol, now a Massachusetts lawyer, will caution that it’s never good to repeat the mistake of the McCarthy era, “putting civil liberties in the back seat in the name of national security.”

   Meeropol, in a phone interview, said his parents’ 1953 deaths in the electric chair impacted his entire life, led to decades of living covertly, then, with the liberalizations of the sixties and seventies, publicly protesting the case – and finally coming to terms with it by running the Rosenberg Fund for Children, a nonprofit foundation that supports children whose parents are leftist activists involved in court cases.

   Although the highly publicized case against his parents was “absurd on its face,” Meeropol said, “I’m not here to re-try that case or to say they were totally innocent. I’m trying to point out the injustice that was done and the lessons that need to be learned from it.”

   Once a group or movement is painted as a menacing international conspiracy, as with the Communism of the mid-20th century or the terrorism of today, it is easy to lump undesirable people in that group and begin taking away their Constitutional protections, he said.

   “If you fast-forward 50 years from the McCarthy era, you see environmental activists, who are charged with destruction of property, being painted as terrorists. It isn’t terrorism,” he said. “You may have questions about people burning a bunch of SUVs, but it’s little different than the Boston Tea Party, where colonists were destroying property to convey a message.”

   Meeropol’s parents, accused of passing the secrets to Soviets on how to make the A-bomb, were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage and electrocuted at Sing Sing Prison in New York State. He and his brother were raised by Abel Meeropol, who wrote the anti-lunching song “Strange Fruit.” 

   “Since then, I’ve learned how to make something good and positive come out of it. That’s the important thing,” he said. “The Constitution, Bill of Rights and our rule of law are worth supporting. My beef with the government is that it’s subverting those and we have to go back to tried and true principles and bring it back on course.”

   The Bush administration’s use of torture, wiretapping and imprisonment without charges is “a travesty – it’s going back to the McCarthy era,” he said.

   Americans today are being given the same choice as in the fifties, between being secure or being free but Meeropol said it’s a “false choice – we are not more secure because we lock up those people in Guantanamo. It just gives more fuel to the fire for the terrorists.”

   However, he added, Americans in the past few years are having second thoughts because “they realize it’s not helping us catch more terrorists and also people are realizing you don’t know who’s going to be in the crosshairs next.”

   Meeropol’s parents were members of the Communist Party and, though the trial evidence has been much disputed in recent years, they were viewed almost entirely negatively in the fifties press, something he says is happening now with “monkey wrenchers,” a term author Edward Abbey popularized in 1975 with his “The Monkey Wrench Gang.”

   “In the public mind and government news releases, my parents were painted as master spies who stole the secrets of the atom bomb. It’s absurd on its face. Atomic scientists later said it was ridiculous and these weren’t the secrets. It (making nuclear weapons) was an industry, not a recipe.”

   The lesson for today – and with monkeywrenching cases – is, “Let’s let calmer heads prevail. Everyone’s entitled to constitutional protections, even if they’re Muslims or eco-saboteurs. They should have fair trials.”

   As the child of parents whom he feels were charged for political reasons, Meeropol says, “My childhood experience gave me my life mission, not to re-try my parents’ case but to help children and to help us, as a country, to stick to our highest ideals.”

   Meeropol will be joined in the talk by Lauren Regan of the Civil Liberties Defense Center in Eugene, who cautioned that “if the government labels you as a terrorist, there are dire consequences, including being convicted for conspiracy, which is a thought crime – you don’t have to actually do anything.”

   The Rosenbergs were the only Americans ever executed just for conspiracy, said Regan, an attorney involved in what she calls “green scare cases” against environmental and animal rights activists.

   “The government targets groups based on their philosophy and that opens them to extraordinary punishments,” said Regan.

   The presentation, entitled “McCarthy Era Lessons for Bush’s America – From Communism to Environmentalism,” is at 7 p.m. tonight [Fri] at the Unitarian Church, 4th and A Streets, Ashland.   ~






Pete McCloskey: Creating Earth Day

A creator of Earth Day and co-sponsor of the Endangered Species Act, former Congressman Pete McCloskey told a major environmental conference here that, for democracy to work in this country – and to preserve the environment of Southern Oregon – people have to move beyond talk and get involved in the system.

   A lifelong Republican until this year, when he changed parties, McCloskey shook his finger at the Jefferson Center audience at Southern Oregon University, saying the U.S. has lower voter registration than Iraq and that “college kids talk a lot but don’t get involved in changing the system.”

   When one SOU student protested that college students were getting more and more active, McCloskey asked how many college students were in attendance. Four hands went up.

   “I ran for Congress last year (against a Republican incumbent) and couldn’t get five people from all the high schools and colleges,” said McCloskey. “They’re turned off on politicians. Who can believe in a politician? I don’t. To be politic means to never offend, and that means you don’t say where you stand. You say you’re going to study it.”

   However, McCloskey said to be effective, citizens need three things: a newsletter, a list of voters and knowledge of when the yes-no vote on your issue is, so you can ask the Congressman how he’s going to vote, letting him know you’re going to tell your members, who will then work for or against him.

   “Does that give you a hint of what I expect of you in the next election?” he said.  “Can you imagine what 5,000 students here (the enrollment of SOU) could do if they fanned out and worked and did that with your Congressman, who is no friend of the environment?”

   McCloskey ran for president against Richard Nixon in 1972 and was the first Republican to call for his impeachment. He was a Marine in Korea, winning the Silver Star and Navy Cross. He served in Congress from 1967 to 1983. A land use lawyer, McCloskey ran against for Congress last year against an anti-environment incumbent and lost but helped the Democrat attain victory.

   The creation of Earth Day was made possible in 1970 by the work of college students, even though almost no one, including politicians, knew what environmentalism was at the time, he said.

   With the success of Earth Day, politicians, including Republicans scrambled to get on the bandwagon, resulting in the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act.  The environment was bipartisan until the “Republican Revolution” of 1994, he added, when there was a “sudden hostility to the environment,” with President Bush actively working to undo advances of the last 30 years and appointing industry insiders to powerful government positions.

    He also noted that environmental radicals who spike trees set the movement back and ultimately “do harm to the environment.”

   McCloskey, who will turn 80 next month, said Sen. Barack Obama reminded him of a major role model, John F. Kennedy, and would be a good candidate to lead a “return to an environmental presidency.”

   McCloskey was the keynote speaker at the third annual summer conference of the Jefferson Center, which studies religious and philosophical questions, focusing this year on “The Earth in the Hot Seat: Ethics and the Environment.”

   Workshops and speeches go on through Sunday afternoon at SOU’s Stevenson Union Arena and include local as well as prominent national speakers, including Baird Callicott, Linda Mearns and Nalini Nadkarni. Information is at www.thejeffcenter.org.  ~






William James Perry:
Preventing Suitcase Nukes

  America’s focus on cutting nuclear weapons, once a big priority in the 1990s, has, because of the war of terrorists, fallen by the wayside, thus increasing the risk that those terrorists will get and use nukes in U.S. cities, a former secretary of defense said here last night. 

   “The dangers of nuclear terrorism are very real and the results would be catastrophic,” said William Perry, the defense chief under President Clinton, 1994 to 1997. “The things we can do to mitigate this are not being done.”

   Perry, in a speech to the local United Nations Association at Temple Emek Shalom in Ashland, said terrorists would very much like to set off nukes in American cities, but the hard part is getting plutonium or high-grade uranium to make it with – and the more nuclear weapons and nuclear nations there are, the easier it is to get.

   A Stanford-educated physicist, Perry has spent his life in the study of nuclear weapons and delivery systems, successfully working after the collapse of the Soviet Union to make Ukraine, then the third biggest nuclear nation, nuclear weapon-free. He is now a senior fellow at the Stanford-Harvard Preventive Defense Project an arms control and national security think tank.

   Perry was also a member of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group, and noted in an interview that while its recommendations for resolving the war were at first ignored, they are gradually being accepted as the situation deepens.

   All parties now accept the study group’s assessment that the Iraq situation is “grave and deteriorating,” that enlarged diplomatic efforts must be made, (as seen by Secretary of State Rice’s work with Iran and Syria) and, regarding the most difficult recommendation, bringing troops home in the first quarter of 2008, Perry said he expects a “re-exploration” of that in September, when the U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus briefs Congress on the war.

   “It’s not driven by the (2008) election. I take him (Bush) at his word,” said Perry. “He’s wrong, but he’s doing what he thinks is right.”

   Perry said during his time in government, he saw the military, through human error or technological malfunction, stare global annihilation in the face three times, including once, woken from sleep, hearing a NORAD general tell him, with 15 minutes to make a decision, that they see 200 Soviet missiles headed for the U.S. It was an error.

   “How close we came to catastrophe. Accidental nuclear was avoided as much by luck as good management and, with the end of the Cold War…such dangers have been reduced almost to no risk at all,” said Perry.

   However, the Bush administration is focused on a buildup of tactical (battlefield) nuclear weapons and Russia is working on another generation of intercontinental nuclear missiles, he added, and “if the U.S. and Russia stay on their present course, we’re headed for unprecedented disaster.”

   Warning that his subject for the evening was “grim and foreboding,” Perry cited opinions of experts in the field that there is a “real probability in the next few years,” that if a terrorist nuke were detonated in a major U.S. city, especially Washington, that it would kill 100,000 people, wipe out hundreds of billions of dollars in wealth, collapse the world economy and be “the worst catastrophe ever in the U.S.”

   While noting that terrorists fall flat on the ability to develop advanced nuclear technology, the skills and fissable materials have gotten out of responsible hands, passing from Pakistan to North Korea, then to Libya and other countries, bringing them that much closer to terrorists.

   He called Bush’s plans to install nuclear missiles in Poland “hugely ineffective and expensive and it doesn’t have anything to do with terrorism. It also aggravates our relations with Russia.”

   Nuclear weapons, if they are delivered by terrorists against U.S. cities, will not come by air, but rather by truck or docked ship, said Perry – and the steps America should be taking are the old standards – economic sanctions, weapons inspections, increasing cooperation among nations and strengthening the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaties (offering nuclear power technology if nations defer from nuclear weapons).

   “The Bush administration has a pretty good idea of what needs to be done, but they’re not carrying it out. Putin in Russia has also dropped the ball and is focused on other things.”   ~








Susan Saladoff:
It All Started With a Cup of Hot Coffee

   A documentary movie by Ashland lawyer Susan Saladoff -- indicting “corporate America” for stacking the judicial system against wronged plaintiffs -- has been accepted by the ultra-prestigious Sundance Film Festival for a January premier.

   After 25 years as a trial lawyer, mostly in medical malpractice, Saladoff left her Ashland firm to travel the country, interviewing experts, lawyers and victims on both sides of the issue -- including author John Grisham and Sen. Al Franken -- and is now putting final touches on her 86-minute film called “Hot Coffee.”

   The title comes from the “poster child” of all supposedly frivolous liabiity suits -- the spilling of hot coffee in her lap by an elederly woman at a McDonalds in Albuquerque in 1992, resulting in third-degree burns, skin grafts and a $2.8 million award by a jury, later much reduced.

   Saladoff’s film, she says, substantaties how corporations trumpeted the case as an example of the need for tort reform, damage caps and as justification for lawmakers and judges to bring “runaway juries” under control.

   “Saladoff exposes the way corporations have spent millions distorting this case to promote tort reform. Big business has brewed an insidious concoction of manipulation and lies to protect its interests, and media lapdogs have stirred the cup,” says a promotional squib from Sundance.

   Her film, which premiers at the festival Jan. 24, seeks to make a case that corporations have slanted the playing field in their favor by funding elections of judges who throw out liability awards and by making consumers sign “small print” agreements that nix their constitutional right to trial by jury, limiting them instead to mandatory arbitration “and they pick the decision-maker, with no right to appeal, no requirement to explain the reasons for the decision and it’s done in secret.”

   Saladoff, a law graduate of George Washington University, started her career as a public interest lawyer with Trial Lawyers for Public Justice and has been president of it. She was named an Oregon Super Lawyer each of the last five years.  She was a partner for 12 years in Davis, Hearn, Saladoff and Bridges of Ashland.

   Her film, competing in the U.S. Documentaries category, was one of 16 chosen from 841 applicants. If it does well, she will seek theatrical release and consider other film festivals, she said, noting she’s been invited to show it at the Ashland Independent Film Festival.

   “My one big vision was getting to Sundance. Since they called and told me, I’ve felt ecstatic, overwhelmed and thrilled beyond words,” says Saladoff, who raised most of the money for the film -- her first -- from foundation grants and individuals, securing an experienced team for editing, producing, photography directing and composing, as seen on her site, hotcoffeethemovie.com.

   The movie details four liability cases, showing harm suffered by plaintiffs unable to get access to courts or sufficient awards, she says, including a set of identical twins, now adults -- one in good health and the other with cerebral palsy from birthing with oxygen deprivation.

   In her courtroom malpractice work, Saladoff says, “I usually went in with both hands tied. The jury already had drunk the Kool Aid, completely brainwashed. They believed there were too many frivolous lawsuits and that awards increased their own insurance rates. They believed what they were told to believe, what they heard over and over from corporate p.r.”

   The film, she notes, explores four areas -- the public relations effort to promote tort reform, the “hot coffee” case and the fairness of its award, how state Supreme Court members are “hand-picked and funded...so they’re guaranteed to overturn plaintiff awards” and how corporations get consumers to sign away their rights to court trials, in contracts for employment, mortgages, credit cards and other areas.

   Saladoff tried unsuccessfully to interview noted figures in tort reform, including former Bush aide Karl Rove, a McDonalds lawyer and the head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, but did tape author John Grisham on the stacking of state courts and Sen. Franken on his successful effort to withhold defense contracts from corporations that restrict employees from taking rape cases to court -- triggered by the Jamie Leigh Jones gang rape case against KBR-Halliburton in Iraq.

   “This searing documentary unearths the sad truth,” said the Sundance blurb, “that most of our beliefs about the civil justice system have been shaped or bought by corporate America. Informative, entertaining and a stirring call to action, Hot Coffee will make your blood boil.”

   Saladoff’s courtroom days are on hold as she explores the sudden success of her new career -- and, though she’s mum on its theme, possible production of a new film.   ~







Mark Krause:
Learning to Talk With the Other Primates

   We all know animals can communicate -- but can they communicate like humans and if they can, does that mean we lose our position as a unique and gifted species?

   Such are the questions to be explored at 7 pm Thursday at Southern Oregon University by psychology Prof. Mark Krause, who worked up close for six years at Central Washington University with language abilities of chimpanzees and came away feeling they share a lot of communication skills with us.

   Krause knew and worked with Washoe, who earned fame as the first non-human to learn American Sign Language and use it with humans, this at CWU’s Chimpanzee and Human Communications Institute. Washoe died three years ago at age 42.

   Krause’s presentation, titled “Human Language / Animal Comminication: Bridging the Gap,” will show how he learned that almost all of what humans claim as unique traits -- language, tool use, self-awareness, social and political systems -- all have been shown to occur in non-human species “and not just apes,” although, Krause says, self-awareness seems to be unique to primates.

   Self awareness, Krause notes, is the rare ability to recognize one’s “self” in a mirror and know that it’s “you.”
  
   Tool use, once vaunted as a distinctively human achievement, is now known in many species, he says.

   In his work with chimps as a graduate student, Krause saw them master up to 200 signs. Strangely, he says, they were receptive to more signs than they could produce, that is, they could understand signs even if they couldn’t use some.

   In his research on ape signing at CWU, Krause learned that apes could perform an exotic task once thought unique to humans -- pointing to things and drawing the attention of humans to them.

   Apes can communicate in their own way with chirps, grunts and chest-thumping -- and they have the ability to vocalize alarms that tell other chimps whether a predator is a snake, eagle or leopard, but they can’t vocalize words, as humans do. 

   However, said Krause apes are able to make intriguing inroads in the “gap” between animal and human communication and to get their message across in ways strikingly similar to us.

   Krause will talk about other species who can communicate with humans, including dophins and parrots, though not to the extent of chimps.  Dolphins, he says, can understand full arm signals but not the hand signs chimps can understand.

   The talk is first in the winter series of “On Being Human” -- lectures designed to provoke tought and dialog in many areas of study. The next one deals with “post humans” and “the singularity” that happens when the exploding information in our world exceeds about ability to process it. Others deal with social networks, “post-modern war,” and what goes on in the minds of dogs.   ~







The Gender Forums:
What on Earth Do Men/Women Want?

   In a society of shifting gender roles, Ashland residents are holding a series of public forums, trying to communicate better across the gender gap -- and to answer the age-old question “What do women (and men) want?”

  Of course, everyone wants love, say the six organizers, but how to get there in a world where women have evolved into powerful roles and men have become more sensitive and in touch with their feminine side?

   At the first town hall, in November, attended by about 50 people (sharing at an open mic, no lectures), several women said they’re empowered by high-level jobs and good pay, but feel men have lost a lot of their masculinity. Now that they have what they want economically and creatively, women want men to be more manly and let them be more feminine.

   Organizer Allen Hicks surveyed 125 participants, significantly finding that most wanted the same things - intimacy, honesty, strength, communication and happiness between the sheets. Asked whose sexual satisfaction is more important, the majority of both genders said the woman’s is, this, he says, in violation of the stereotype of male insensitivity in bed.

   “The main thing I saw,” says organizer Robert Wagner, “was that both men and women want the same things and that women want men to have backbone. Women want men to show up with real presence, with heart open and standing strong, taking charge, like in a tango.”

   A second forum will be held at 6:30 pm, Thursday, Feb. 3 at Ashland Community Center, with donation of $10 to $15. It’s entitled “What Do Men & Women Want; What’s Love Got to Do With It?” It’s billed as an event where “women and men can share their wisdom, experiences and common challenges around relationships - a unique opportunity to break through the barriers that separate us and potentially to reconnect in profound ways.”

   Organizers, who are staging the event on their own, with no church, government or social agency, point to a new, emerging era of understanding, cooperation and imtimacy that will replace the tiresome and lonely “battle of the sexes.”

   The historical male-female relationship had the man strong and in charge but showing little sensitivity, equality or listening skill, says organizer Felice Laurel, then there was a second period of women striving for liberation and empowerment and rejecting many gender roles -- and now we’re stepping up to a third level -- and that’s what the gender forums seek to define and support.

   “Women want men to protect us, but not with the old heartless violence,” says Laurel. “It’s taken a lot of work for women to get here and we’re scared to trust (men) again.”

   Several women at the November forum complained that personal growth workshops are mostly women and “there was a lot of onus on men, that they need to do more work,” said organizer Peter Gross, noting that in the emerging gender ethos, men can draw the best from the old macho role as well as the late 20th century sensitivity.

   “The new guy will be a sensitive, intelligent, macho guy,” Gross joked.

   “With heart open and standing strong and connected to my woman,” added Wagner.

   “I’m still the dude!” said organizer Mark Arinsberg. “Women tell me the sexiest thing a man can say is, ‘I am here with my heart open.’”

   Laurel cited the feminine sacred or Goddess spirituality as a source of empowerment and meaning for many women now and that, to her, “Goddess is about being soft woman, surrendering and welcoming the strong masculine to take the lead and allow my light to shine - to relax, to dance, to be soft.”

   “Yes,” said Wagner. “I want to lead, as in a dance, to empower her being feminine and open to me to lead as who I am. We support each other in giving our gifts to the world.”

   Taking note of the historical male offenses of slavery, domestic violence, war, Arinsberg notes that in the emerging paradigm, women (and some men, too) draw wisdom from the sacred feminine -- and it’s enabling him to move beyond the male-female polarities to focus love on all people, rather than just a soulmate.

   The feminine spiritual is not about finding an external deity -- or lover, says organizer Acacia Land. “You’ll never find your soulmate until you feel your own love and connection with yourself.”

   Forum participants “stood up and let the tears come down, showing that we’re all going through the same thing and shouldn’t feel alone,” said Arinsberg. “At our core, everyone wants to be accepted, heard and loved.”   ~







Echo Fields:
The World’s Most Dangerous Idea

   We stand on the brink of a disease-free utopia where our technology has overcome aging and given us vastly increased intelligence, physical prowess and psychological stability. Sound good?

   It might be, says Southern Oregon University sociologist Echo Fields, who will give a presentation Wednesday on the “transhuman” movement -- or it could be, as one scientist called it, “the world’s most dangerous idea.”

   Transhumanism or H+, as it is symbolized, goes by the slogan “healthier, smarter, happier” and envisions “tiny, tiny, tiny” nanotechnology devices implanted in our bodies to remove cancer, disease and effects of aging.

   “This raises ethical issues in the distinction between treatment and enhancement. It’s easy to support treatment, but when you start talking enhancement of healthy people to make them smarter, stronger and more attractive and extending life significantly,” says Fields, then you’re in the middle of an emerging debate, with “technological dystopians” raising concerns about where science is taking us.

   “Being healthier, smarter and happier is one set of motives. There’s also the profit motive. Technological utopians are unabashed capitalists who see nothing wrong with making lots of money. Then there’s the issues of military uses and political power,” says Fields, pointing out that one possible biological use of nanotechnology is to “grow” body armor for combat.

   As a sociologist, Fields will discuss the impact on society of cloning and genetic engineering, as well as the ethic that believes science must explore what it can explore, then try to regulate it for the common good afterwards -- what she calls “the inescapable logic of the technological imperative.”

   Fields notes the view among scientists that “it’s going to happen anyway,” so “we’d better have a frank and open political debate about it and try to guide it.”

   Fields will explore the theoretical idea of a looming technological “singularity,” when the speed and capacity of computers becomes so great that it becomes impossible for us to understand the world’s information or make predictions from it.

   If that’s not disturbing enough, the singularity also carries the possibility that artificial intelligence “will be able to do everything the human brain can do, then humans become pets or pests and the machines might call pest control or just run over us like roadkill,” says Fields, pointing to portrayals of the idea in many science fiction books and films.

   Asked her take on these developments as a sociologist, Fields said, “I’m a little gloomy. If you marry technology to the logic of multinational capitalism, then add governments and their military power, then I’m not sure we can stop what’s happening.

   “We’re addicted to our gagets and Americans are great optimists and...we want to believe technology will solve all our problems and make our lives better and better. The wheels are in motion. It’s coming. How will the rest of us deal with the social consequences and rate of change? The transhumanists could be right, that it all will make us healthier, smarter, happier. We’re going to plunge ahead, whether we like it or not. The potential risk could be disastrous.”

    Fields’ presentation plays with ideas of Kurt Vonnegut in his novel “Player Piano,” where machines run everything, control all wealth and power -- with Paul Proteus as an engineer working for them, and humans kept around, but with no real purpose.

   Her talk, “Better Than Human? Paul Proteus Meets the Post-Humans,” is free and open to the public as part of SOU’s series, “On Being Human.”   ~







Boys to Men & Rose Circle:
Teens Learning to Trust

   Life as a teen can be cool, but sometimes too cool -- cold, in fact, because it can be hard to find someone to talk to, learn about your own feelings and experience really listening and being listened to, including getting to know and trust people outside your age group.

   That’s what mentoring is all about, say leaders in The Rose Circle and Boys to Men of Southern Oregon, two non-profit, volunteer groups whose members hold trainings, weekly groups, one-on-one mentoring, camps and games to foster values of friendship, trust, responsibility, honesty and communication.

   The groups are presenting a Community Celebration Dance and fundraiser at 8:30 tonight at Standing Stone Brewery in Ashland to fund their efforts. Music is by Jerry Attrick and the Pacemakers. Suggested donation is $12.

   “At its heart, this mentoring comes from a desire for a better community, bringing back that ancient feeling of a healthy village,” says Leslie Lanes of Rose Circle. “Its value to society is teaching people to handle emotions, resolve conflicts and learn skills that contribute to a healthy community. If you look at the problems of society, most of them come from not having these skills.”

   The Rose Circle mentors go through trainings to develop their skills -- and meet bi-weekly in a safe, empowering environment, she says, with teens aged 11 to 17. Older mentees can become junior mentors, helping teens a few years younger.

   A small fee is charged for supplies and a scholarship fund. In summers mentors and mentees do retreat at Camp Luna, according to www.therosecircle.org. Both genders can be mentors or mentees, but mentors work with teens of their own gender.

   Rose Circle Junior Mentor Natasha Brooks, a Southern Oregon University freshman says the group “taught me a lot about listening and voicing my opnions in a creative and respectful way. It helped me figure out my values and how I want to portray them in my emotions.”

   Many of the mentees from her circle as a younger girl have become close friends, Brooks says, because of the depth and trust developed in group.

   “You have to really pay attention and take in everything they say. It’s active listening and it’s part of what they taught us,” she says.

   Although she didn’t want mentoring and “had to be dragged” into the group, Junior Mentor Maile Raymond, a senior at Ashland High School, says, “I learned so much about myself, gained friendships and learned values I didn’t know I had issues with.

   “It changed my life. I had issues with trusting people. I learned you gain trust in intimate gatherings.”

   Lanes, who now mentors mentors, said it’s especially powerful and credible when older teens mentor younger ones and pass on what they’ve learned.

   “It’s a wonderful part of mentoring,” said Lanes. “Younger teens love to be mentored by older teens and have them as role models.”

   Started in Ashland 10 years ago, Boys to Men is similar and served as a model for The Rose Circle, which started eight years ago.

   “The purpose of Boys to Men,” said John Fisher-Smith, one of the founders, “is to help boys move to adult manhood in healthy ways, particularly in emotional literacy, which is the capacity to express feelings and make it safe to share feelings.”

   Fisher-Smith, or “Grandfather Raven,” as he is called, tells tales of one boy, aged 10, who, after a summer B2M camp, announced that he’d always wanted to talk about his feelings like this, but never had. Another boy, 15, perpetually wore long bangs covering most of his face, but after a B2M retreat “he lifted the hair off his face and went to school that way.”

   Frequently, he notes, parents will report that a son suddenly is helping with kitchen and yard chores, without being asked.

   “The value to society is that it makes wonderful people, better citizens and good friends - people who trust one another, have fun and learn compassion,” says Fisher-Smith. “They learn that other boys suffer the way they do - pain, grief, loss, sadness, things they feel strongly about but have never been able to talk about. It develops trust and affection.”

   A member for six years, AHS junior Keb Bales says B2M was critical in helping him through the deaths of two siblings.

   “They (group members) were my friends. I could just talk. It made me a better person,” says Bales. “Every time, I came back with something new. I would see life in entirely new ways and think ‘what can I do better?’

   “I could look at the world and realize my life might be going through a rough patch, but humanity will need my help more than my pity. I can better the world if I better myself.”

   Seventh grader Taran McGuire of Rogue River reports, “I’ve learned to accept different personalities and to be more mature. I think about what I’m going to say before I say it.”

   Bullying is a huge topic at B2M, says longtime trainer-mentor Pete Young, adding to wounds of childhood that seem to get much healing in adult mentors “when mentors meet the needs of a child. It reframes that adult’s childhood. It fills the loving cup and deeply affects family culture.”

   B2M offers a weekend Raven training for boys 9 to 12. It focuses on speaking “my truth,” what to do about bullying, “healthy and toxic emotional foods,” and what it means to be a man -- along with lots of fun and games, according to www.boystomensouthernoregon.org.

   “The boys list the qualities of a good friend (loyal, fun, respectful, got your back, kind, wild, crazy, safe, trustworthy…) and we all agree to treat each other in this way on the weekend,” says the website.

   “It’s very enlivening and brings the life force to the surface,” says mentor Devon Strong. “A lot of it comes from multi-age interaction which is very uncommon in our society.”

   B2M also offers a Rites of Passage weekend for boys 13 to 17, focusing on changes and challenges leading to the new roles of manhood -- and involving tests of endurance, courage and competence, according to the website.

   You can view a YouTube video on B2M by entering “boys to men southern oregon.” Both mentoring groups seek volunteers, who will be screened and trained. A portal for donations, as well as contact info are on the groups’ websites. Lanes is at leslie@leslielanes.com. Fisher-Smith is at fish@opendoor.com.    ~







Todd Carney:
Must There Always Be War?

   The human psyche has a lot of aggression in it and there will always be wars, however, it’s morphing into “post-modern war,” chiefly against stateless militants -- and you might not even know it’s going on unless you watch the news.

   So says history teacher Todd Carney of Southern Oregon University, who speaks at 7 pm tonight [thur] in the Art Building auditiorium. It’s free and open to the public.

   His lecture, part of the university’s “On Being Human” series, is titled “Homo Homini Lupus: War in the Modern World.” The 5th century Latin saying means “Man is a wolf to his fellow man.”

   Wars come not so much from rational state policy as from “something deep in the human psyche,” said Carney, in an interview. “I claim we all have this aggression in us as an aspect of being human. It’s something humans do and it’s a mistake to say it comes from bad people like Hitler or Stalin.”

   His presentation, Carney cautioned, is controversial, “not necessarily a happy topic and will look at the dark side of being human and lay it at everyone’s feet.”

   In medieval and ancient times, war was nations clashing as professional armies on battlefields, then, since the French Revolution, shifted into “modern war,” involving entire populations and being fought anywhere -- and now, Carney said, we see the model of post-modern war in the “stateless warlords” of 9/11 and jihadism.

   While Gandhi and Martin Luther King have helped create a “strikingly different” model for non-violent conflict resolution, “it’s not enough,” he notes.

   “We got rid of slavery and, today, racism is 1/100th what it was when I was born,” Carney notes, “We have to accept we’re not going to change fundamentally, so we have to create a civilization that compensates for our natural tendencies which come from our subconscious mind.

   “Fundamentally, civilization is about banding together to cooperate economically and to protect ourselves.”

   Given that war will always be with us, Carney says, it’s necessaray to have a “guardian class,” as Plato called it -- warriors who carry and use the aggression of their country and protect the rest of society.

   “It’s what poet Robert Bly called the warrior myth -- those who guard our boundaries and do the bidding of the king and who have a transcendent cause they believe in,” said Carney, adding that both men and women have aggression and can be included in that mythic mission.

   Carney rejects New Age notions that humanity will evolve into peaceful harmony and brands as “ridiculous” the assertions of many of his students that wouldn’t have gone along with Hitler’s mass pogroms and conquests. 

   “Within each of us is the capacity to do such things,” he said, “but we don’t know history; we look at our TV sets instead.”

   In his unprecedented war crimes, Hitler had the backing of hundreds of thousands of Nazi party members and millions of German citizens, while Japan committed similar aggression. The US killed several million with the firebombing of seven German and 57 Japanese cities, something few Americans even know about, he said.

   Denial is a key part of our warlike nature and “Germany and Japan are still in a state of denial and so is the United States,” he said, adding that some Americans object to the 250,000 deaths from the two nuclear attacks on Japan without noting incendiary bombing, intended to turn cities into furnaces and kill many more civilians.

   Carney dismisses theories about a peaceful era before the Indo-European expansion into Europe -- or the arrival of “badass Europeans” among gentle Native Americans.

   He also sees a positive side to the arrival of nuclear weapons -- that they kept two superpowers, the US and Soviet Union from starting World War III, since everyone knew that would be the end of human life on the planet. Instead, smaller wars happened.

   The United Nations is a nice idea but “turned its back on Rwanda while 800,000 Tutsis were killed with machetes. It’s a paper tiger, incapable of protecting anyone. If it were allowed to be a real tiger, it could contain some of these things,” said Carney.

   “Aggression can come out in many forms, personally, in community and nationally. It’s a permanent part of human nature...but we can be aware of it and come together in a civilization, creating rules so we don’t kill each other.”   ~





Marla Estes: the Zen of Parenting a Teen

   Being a teen can be hard -- and parenting teens can be just as hard. But it can be a lot easier, more like a fun adventure, if parents learn and work on resolving their own baggage from teen years, helping them move into the role of loving listener and guide.

   That’s the philosophy of Marla Estes and Katherine Holden, who present a free workshop, “Coming of Age Through Film: Self-Exploration as a Tool for Parenting Your Teen,” at 7 pm, Tuesday, March 29 at Ashland Public Library. It introduces a series of four Saturday classes, starting April 9, with a sliding scale of $160 to $240.

   The class analyzes films about teen years as a doorway to understanding our own rites of passage, as well as life transitions that may still be going on, Estes says, such as empty nesting, divorce and career change, as well parents’ relationships with their parents.

   Instead of “going into reactivity” or trying to control the changes and explorations of teens, the class will approach it “from inside out, look at it from their (parents) own coming of age,” says Estes, “so that we don’t stop having empathy for them and get blind to the human factor.”

   Many parents, she notes, still carry behaviors and strategies from adolescence, if they were overly compliant or defiant in how they dealt with their own parents -- and expect or fear their kids will do the same.

   While it can be hard to control teen behavior, says Estes, “we can look at what’s happening in us” and ask ourselves, “what can I learn, so I can be less triggered by my teens and ultimately be able to be more supportive of them.”

   On the “attachment theory” spectrum, says Estes, many parents were raised on the extreme poles of abandonment or overprotectiveness, so they approach parenting by thinking kids need either an excess of independence or of control.

   “If parents (as kids) didn’t get what they needed, they can approach parenting by being too clingy to teens -- and teens don’t need that,” says Holden, formerly of Ashland High School’s Wilderness Charter School.

   “If you approach teens by trying to change them, that is counterproductive,” says Estes. “Once I change my part in the dance, it changes for the other person, too.”

   The workshop uses teaching, discussion and exercises - and analyzes an array of coming-of-age stories from film, says Estes, and will allow members to “sit and talk about their own fear and discomfort from teen times, raising it from the unconscious” so that it doesn’t get in the way of parenting in the present time.

   “We have the responsiblity to protect our children,” says Holden, “but if we’re anxious about what can happen in cars, based on our own teen experiences, we might put that into our children. As we isolate and learn our own fears, we can see where our fears leave off and their lives begin.”

   Estes calls it “being connected, yet separate...providing a net, not a nest for teens, not being either compliant or forcing, so there’s no failure to launch.”

   Coming of age is a near-mythical “hero’s journey” of transformation from dependent child to independent adult in which, says Estes, “the psyche need to prove its mettle and break away from the parents -- and a lot of times, parents take it personally.”

   The most useful tool in the world, she says, is a QTIP, which stands for “Quit Taking It Personally.”

   The goal of the workshop and its parenting strategies, says Estes, is “not to give solutions but to raise awareness, which makes relationships more healthy, in an organic flow...the ‘Ten Steps’ approach doesn’t work. When you explore yourself, you’re more attuned to the situation.”

   About simply pushing controls on teens, says Estes, “if it works, great, but if it hasn’t worked so far, doing it harder isn’t going to work either.”

   “Our approach is about open exploration. Control usually doesn’t work and it suppresses things --and they will come up later in life. Teens need to come to an autonomy and they’ll make mistakes doing it,” says Estes, a counselor with a master’s degree in transpersonal psychology.

   In parenting teens, a major goal is to transition from the control you had when they were small children -- and “move into a place of participation,” says Holden. “Teens will pull back if we don’t listen to their fears and hear their story and they feel held. Healthy communication can’t happen unless parents look at their own stuff and listen.”   ~






Gaea Yudron: Noticing Ageism

  Having come to grips with prejudices of race, gender and sexual orientation, our society may think true equality has been achieved.

   It hasn’t, say two composers who are putting on a musical review, “A New Wrinkle,” to show how pervasive and damaging is prejudice against older folks.

   Elders have reached a richness of experience and overcome a lot of the handicaps of youth, but, because of our society’s fear of aging and death -- and its glorifying of things youthful and beautiful -- elders are often sidelined with stereotypes that they’re unattractive, useless, sexless, losing mental powers and don’t hear very well, said Ashland songwriter Gaea Yudron.

   Yudron, 69, and composer Laura Rich, 55, will stage a humorous and engaging series of songs and narrative at 7 pm, Saturday, April 23 at Ashland Community Center, 59 Winburn Way. It includes opera singer Pauline Sullivan, author and coach Dr. Rick Kirschner and improv comedy by “Hamazon” Carolyn Myers.

   “It’s to educate people about aging and debunk ageist myths and stereotypes,” says Yudron, “illiminating the true opportunities of later life that come from the accumulated values of their life experience.”

   Rich observes, “Our society greatly values youth and beauty, but if you haven’t spent your life watching Gilligan’s Island, the reality is that older people have so much more accumulated knowledge, are emotionally calmer, mellowed, introspective and can use these skills in productive ways.”

   The concept of ageism, says Yudron, was formed in 1968 by Robert Neil Butler to point out discrimination and stereotypes against the elderly, children and adolescents, suggesting they should behave in certain ways because of limitations presumably based on their age.

   Ageism is institutionally imbedded in hiring, promotion and pay, but is also subtle, with elders treated “disdainfully, as less than human, not quite up to snuff,” says Yudron. “A lot of people are so unconscious about their ageist attitudes.”

   As an example, Rich points out how her mother, “who is very beautiful and strong, who hikes and swims, but when we’re together, people speak loudly and slowly to her and talk to her like she’s very cute. She hates it.”

   In the field of medicine, we see ageism in the fact that “some of the most important (drug) testing is not done on older adults and very few medical schools teach gerontology,” says Yudron.

   “The attitude is let’s ignore it, we don’t want it...We have a fear of aging. Old is a dirty word,” she says. As with racism, this perception is internalized by elders as low self-worth, she notes, causing them to lose motivation.

   “Our societal norms,” says Rich, “look at 25 to 40 as the productive, normal adult and if you’re outside that age bracket, you don’t matter any more...you’re different.”

   Adds Yudron, “People are so blindsided by this cultural belief, that old age is about decline, instead of focusing on what works, what’s beautiful and creative about it.”

   The pair point out high achievers of later life, such as Bertrand Russell, Einstein, Jimmy Carter and Maya Angelou, “people who took decades to develop their life’s work till it was in full fruition.”

   While mid-life is seen as a time of high achievement, but also of identity issues and mid-life crisis -- old age, notes Yudron, “comes with a sense that you can pull out the stops, because you’re motivated by the realization of how much time you have left and what you’re going to do with it.

   “There’s an urgency and passion about it...It’s a powerful stage of life.”

   The show’s humor-laced songs include “Sex After 60,” debunking the idea that elders are sexless, “Baba Yaga’s Raga” about our mania to “pass for young” (as gays used to try to pass for straight, Yudron says) and “Hip-Hop Elder’s Rant,” where a senior cuts loose with rage at the way society marginalizes him.

   Not all songs seek to tear down ageism. “Are You Gonna Take It With You to the Grave?” offers hope and personal growth through letting go of lifelong blame and grudges.

   “It’s a powerful stage of life and there’s a lot of personal growth here,” says Yudron. “It offers a lot of freedom. You can choose to step out of the boxes you’ve been living in so long and take risks, even if they’re not outward risks. A lot is happening inside. Elders have a lot of ability to command authority and effect positive change.”   ~



Rick Kirschner: Clicking With People in an Age When Most of Us Are Clicking Our Keyboards

   “Clicking” with people is vital to sharing good ideas, building a circle of friends and opening up the world of career opportunities, yet, for many people its simple rules and guidelines remain elusive -- something that author and motivational speaker Rick Kirschner of Ashland is trying to help.

   “We need each other and we need to get along to have a life,” says Kirschner, author of “How to Click With People: The Secret to Better Relationships in Business and Life.” It’s just published by Hyperion Press in New York at $24.99.

   With all our screens and the internet, he says, “we’re disappearing into our homes, so how do we reconnect with people? The streets are empty on warm summer evenings and you see screens flickering in houses, so how do we successfully connect?”

   “We do it with the scientific principle of resonance, which is matching frequencies. In successful relationships, people get on the same wave length, which is tuning into what’s important to the other person, what do they need and value, what drives them?”

   Kirschner, while studying to become a naturopathic doctor, got hooked on motivational and inspirational lecturing and leading of workshops, now lectures all over the world and has authored eight books on the topic, including his perennial seller, “Dealing With People You Can’t Stand.”

   His clients include Kraft Foods, Texas Instruments, Heineken, NASA’s Leadership Training and the Ashland City Council, which he says “was in really bad shape and couldn’t get the business of the city done. They needed to change their attitude, behavior and organizational structure in order to work.”

   The main thing to get about clicking with people, he says, is that “human beings are feeling creatures, then we use our brains to justify what we feel.”

   So, basically forget about selling your ideas on others unless you convince them you’re on their page, share their values and hear everything they’re saying.

   “When we create this resonant field, then we can put an idea in it,” he says, noting that when we’re tired, overwhelmed and stressed out, which is much of the time, we “conserve brain energy by switching off our brains. We become cognitive misers.”

   The problem with that is, “If all we know is what we don’t want, then we’re going to get more of it.”

   So, how do we click with others?

   Most of it’s simple -- stuff we knew as “manners” when we were children, like: be charming and warm, carry yourself like you know what you’re talking about, keep your message short and simple and, above all listen and practice “blending,” which is giving feedback that shows you’re listening.

   “This reduces the distance between us and them. You’re finding the common ground. Ask questions based on what the other person said. “It’s a rare experience to realize -- someone is clicking with me.”

   This allows the feeling of “truthiness,” he says, noting that term was coined by comedian Stephen Colbert to mean gut-level certainty so obvious that it doesn’t need to pass the test of reason or facts.

   “You can click with anyone if you want to. You have to get them to know you’re listening to them at a deeper level and get the personal aspects of them. No one cooperates with anyone whom they think isn’t with them.”

   It’s vital to click with people, he says, and it opens doors to opportunity, to building relationships that last a lifetime.

   At his trainings, one special connection Kirschner made was with astronaut T.J. Creamer who gave him the special treat of calling him from space -- on Christmas Eve, when he knew Kirschner would be with family and friends who would register amazement.

   “It was the greatest thing in my life,” said Kirschner, 62, a big fan of Star Trek.

   His book points out stumbling blocks to clicking, such as blame, making excuses and universalizing, such as saying “everyone” does or wants something.

   A chapter covers electronic communication, including phones, where you should
--Make sure your timing is right.
--Use the person’s name. It holds their attention
--Match voice volume, speed, rhythm and energy
--Use similar sentence length and word choices as the other person.
--Listen and blend.
--Be prepared with info from the internet.
--Never multitask.

   A short-cut to understanding “clicking,” writes Kirschner in his book, is that there are three things you can be sure about with everyone you meet:
--They love to hear themselves talk.
--They want to be heard and understood.
--They are dreawn to peole who listen to them.









Nel Noddings: an Ethics Based on Caring,
Like You See Mothers Have for Children

   Imagine a set of ethics based on caring -- the sort of caring we see between mother and child -- rather than the traditional Western ethic of trying to “do the right thing” based on self-interest.

   These two powerful streams of morality will be explored Friday at Southern Oregon University by noted author and philosopher Nel Neddings, a former professor at Stanford, Columbia and Colgate Universities and author of “Caring: a Feminist Approach to Ethics and Moral Education” (1984) and the just-published “The Maternal Factor: Two Paths to Morality.”

   The talk is at 4 pm, Friday, April 29 at 118 Science Building, Southern Oregon University and is part of SOU’s “On Being Human” series. It is free and open to the public.

   “We have the two main origins of our moral life, self-interest, built up over the centuries by men, with the approach that ‘I won’t hurt you, so you won’t hurt me’,” said Noddings, in a phone interview. “The other, much neglected, derives its ethics from the maternal instinct, mother and child, which is the only human relationship more concentrated on the other person than oneself.”

   A debate is going on now in the field of ethics about the two main sources, says Noddings, adding that the maternal instict of “natural and ethical caring” is now being noticed by evolutionary biologists in animals as a “basic sense of fairness” based on concern for other animals.

   “Care ethics starts with a basic relationship between the carer and the cared for, with both having a role, in contrast to the traditional ethics of the moral agent doing the right thing,” said Noddings, who has been married 60 years, with 10 children.

   “It is needs-based. The carer listens, attends and hears the expressed needs of the cared for and tries to respond to them with care and trust. This is in contrast to the needs and rights” in the traditional model.

   Noddings has degrees in mathematics and physical sciences, serving 17 years in elementary and high school teaching and administrative posts, followed by a Stanford doctorate in education.

   In another talk Thursday at SOU, she will take American public education to task for creating a uniform, unequal system that aims all kids at college and fails vast numbers who need a rich, well-rounded education that carries them into good vocations.

   Her talk, “Equality in American Schools: Should Everyone Be Prepared for College?” is at 7 pm, Thursday, April 28 at Meese Auditorium, SOU Art Building. It’s free and open to the public.

   Noddings will examine arguments for and against preparing all students for college, but says “school districts are requiring algebra and geometry for everyone, with the result that lots of kids are failing and taking (poor) courses.”

   Western European nations have a better model with “a thorough educational program for citizenship, family life and culture in general,” Noddings says. “I’m a very strong advocate of a renewed vocational education system if it has rich and relevant general education and sufficient guidance to avoid the tracking disasters of the 20th century.”

   Tracking disasters, she notes, are the funneling of “well-to-do kids to college prep and poor and minority to vocational...we need different programs for kids of different talents, but make all courses rich and interesting, not just a choice of ‘academic’ or ‘dead end’ courses.”

   The concept of different courses for different students is found through all the philosophy of education, from Plato to Rousseau and Dewey, she says, adding, “kids are different.”

   The concept of equality under a democracy has taken education down the wrong road so that it came to mean “you give all kids the same courses, however, if I give you (the courses) I have, that’s not equality.”

      Noddings has written 17 books and is Lee L. Jacks Professor of Education, Emerita, at Stanford University. She is a past president of the National Academy of Education, the Philosophy of Education Society, and the John Dewey Society. She presents her talk on education as the 2011 SOU Frank J. Van Dyke Scholar in Professional Ethics.   ~







Meredith McFadden: Healing With Sound

  All day long, every day, we are inundated by sound, but it’s random, from iPods, TV, traffic, sound systems, chatter. What if it were balanced and focused, harmonized with intent to heal and relieve stress?  What would it sound like? And would it be healing?

   Meredith McFadden of Talent has built a counseling-healing practice around this exotic concept, using drums, rattles, bells, her own singing and chanting -- and the haunting sound of large crystal bowls, which she sets vibrating in seemingly magic ways.

   “Everything has vibrations,” says McFadden, “and sound waves have immense effects on overall health. Sound healing is proving to be one of the most direct, relevant modalities for de-stressing, raising immunity, improving functioning of organs and adjusting chemical imbalances that affect mood and cognitive skills.”

   While such claims from sound healers may not be scientifically established, the proof is in the pudding -- and after a demonstration session, I felt a profound, unmistakeable sense of well-being, inner peace, confidence, optimism, happiness, eagerness and ability to realize goals and visions, which McFadden, a licensed counselor, has you talk about before the session.

   Coincidence? Nah. Something happened -- and client Austin Ferris echoes the notion, saying, “It had two components. One was spiritual, calling forth my deeper longings and re-centering me at the soul level. The other was practical and physical. It felt as good or better than a good massage, but all through my body. I’m completely de-stressed.”

   It’s easy to describe what happens in sound healing but hard to say why. It’s kind of like a special present or delightful journey, like spoiling yourself at the spa or going on a picnic and have someone serenade you by the creek on the first nice day of spring -- and, although it’s decidedly “spiritual,” you don’t have to believe anything.  It works whether you believe in it or not.

   It goes like this: You sit and talk about what’s going on in your life lately -- the issues, frustrations, feelings and where you’d like to get to if you could live your best case scenario. You pull a tarot card, sometimes three of them for your issue, action and outcome. This is optional. She lights incense and calls in your guiding spirits, angels or whatever you want to call them or it. You lay on her massage table and can cover your eyes with an eye pillow.

   From then on, it’s all about sound. As she walks around you, intuiting what will work for you, she drums, chants, rings tiny Tibetan cymbals, rattles “to break up the fields and make your aura porous,” then, one by one, activates and harmonizes the seven chakras or energy centers located up and down the body, by evoking amazing, ear-dazzling tones from her crystal bowls.

   Each bowl has a different tone, which resonates with the natural vibration of each chakra, McFadden explains, noting, “When the brain and nervous system are agitated, the brain waves are uneven. The goal is to cue them, to entrain them in their stable rhythm, activated but steady, de-stressing the whole body.”

   The practice of sound healing is an ancient one, says McFadden, as seen in a range of tribal, indigenous rituals, such as drumming, chanting, rhythmic dances around a fire, prayerful group singing, shamanic journeying -- and it’s been revived as a modern, Western practice since about the mid-1990s, with trainings available. McFadden’s wall sports several certificates from such seminars in Santa Fe, N.M., alongside her public school teaching certificate and master’s degree in psychology from Lewis & Clark College.

   McFadden smiles as she acknowledges the “wu-wu” component of sound healing, but, as a hard-headed, university-trained therapist, says, “hey, everything in the universe vibrates and has its optimal rate level and if this reduces stress and ill health and improves mood, then I’m going to help people with it.”

   Ferris agrees, saying, “It opens me up. I’m more comfortable with all my emotions, at ease, confident. The surprising thing is that I thought it would be all ethereal, but I had a strong reaction to it. We’re all familiar with how high-pitched sound can shatter a window. There’s a lot of physical power in sound. It penetrates everything. It goes through blood, bones, every cell -- and those crystal bowls, they have the strongest effect.”

   Ferris likens it to “a dream, a vision, a journey -- and I definitely felt a lot of angels and spiritual animals visiting me. The second time, I was in a crystal cave, a healing cave.”

   As for the “healing” part of sound healing, says McFadden, “Any disease comes out of less than optimal rate of vibration. In sound healing, it uses that vibration that brings the body back to its normal rate of vibration. It does it by entraining, coaxing or cueing it to the ideal rate. The proof is in how it feels.”   ~





Mitchell Frangadakis:
the Search for the Soul, If Indeed We Have One

   Although our evidence is entirely intuitive, scriptural or wishful -- with no science to back it up -- most of us believe we have a soul that is somehow the source of our identity and that goes on after death.

   Philosophy Professor Mitchell Frangadakis of Southern Oregon University will explore “Search for the Soul: the Quest for Human Essence” at a free and public talk at 7 pm, Thursday, April 14 at Meese Auditorium in the SOU Art Building.

   The soul has a lot of overlap with what we call the mind, he says, but we humans generally consider that only our species has souls and it has something to do with the fact that we know we have souls and other creatures don’t know that.

   The concept of an immortal and personal soul has a long history -- and speculations about it can be traced to the earliest civilization in Sumer (now in Iraq). It took root in Egyptian civilization and was picked up by Greek philosophers Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, then jumped to early Christian fathers, said Frangadakis. It wasn’t part of earliest Christian theology.

   “The pre-Socratics and Socrates examined many possibilties of the soul, including that it did not exist. Socrates said the soul was immortal and that idea was picked up by early church fathers,” he said, in an interview.

   The lecture, part of SOU’s “Being Human” series, will trace the soul’s journey with three saints, Aquinas, Anselm and Augustine. He will explain Descartes, who is famous for saying, “I think, therefore I am,” indicating that the soul had become the mind or “the quality of subjective experience” and created a mind-body dualism.

   The existentialism of the 20th century, Frangadakis explains, gets rid of the whole problem, proclaiming “there is no soul or essence; it’s self-created in an ongoing process by the individual. There is no soul endowed to us by a supreme being. It’s not there.”

   Existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre famously said, “We’re condemned to be free” and “existence preceeds essence,” meaning we aren’t born with an essence or soul, according to Frangadakis. “In the past, essence preceded existence. With this, we make our own essence.”

   Resonating with existentialism in modern philosophy is functionalism, which, he says, looks at “mind” as identical with the brain and “there is no mind-body dualism; it’s all just neuro-physical functioning. They eliminate soul and mind.”

   Functionalism means “the brain is what’s happening and you can call it soul or mind if you want. You can add any poetic meaning you choose but they (functionalists) call that folk psychology.”

   Extrapolating into AI or artificial intelligence now coming in to being, Frangadakis says Watson, the IBM supercomputer may have beat the Jeopardy champions and won big money, but he doesn’t know it.

   “When we humans know something, it’s our mind that tells us,” he says, noting that Watson has no “essence” (soul), which takes us back to the search for the soul -- and ironically, the ancient Greek word for soul is “psyche.”

   For himself, Frangadakis says he’s inclined to see the human soul, not as something that “flies off at death” but in the Hindu sense of “atman,” knowledge of the personal soul as part of “brahman,” the universal soul, which can be visualized as a cup of water dipped out of the ocean and seemingly separate but, at death again becomes one with it.

   Today, there’s a “basic split” in religions and philosophies, with the west believing more in a personal soul and identity, he says, and this is the dualistic tradition, while the east tends toward the non-dualistic oneness found in Hindu and Buddhism, though those faiths make room for an individual soul that reincarnates to work through karma until achieving “liberation” in oneness. ~





John Brandenburg:
Mars & Its Nuclear Disaster

   At one time, Mars had oceans, atmosphere and life but it all got blown away millions of years ago -- with evidence pointing to an asteroid hit or naturally-occuring nuclear reaction, according to author-physicist John Brandenburg, PhD, a graduate of Medford High School and Southern Oregon University.

   In his new book, “Life and Death on Mars: the New Mars Synthesis,” Brandenburg hypothesizes that Mars had at atmosphere, oceans and life, but about 180 million years ago, it’s possible that a natural nuclear reaction wiped it all out, a theory he bases on “a pattern of isotopes” -- radium, thorium, potassium and iodine 129 -- typical of nuclear explosions.

   A plasma physicist at Orbital Technologies in Madison, Wisconsin, Brandenburg said, in an interview, “Mars is a living planet. It had a large biosphere but the climate collapsed and there was a mass extinction. The causes aren’t clear. It also could have been caused by an asteroid hit. It’s a dramatic and tragic story.”

   Brandenburg says natural nuclear reactions are possible and occurred naturally, billions of years ago in Gabon, Africa. They account for the red color of Mars and are traceable to “hot spots” on the planet, he adds.

   Brandenburg has presented his theories in conferences and jounals -- and had them featured in a CNN story, but concedes they are controversial and not accepted by mainstream science.

   One such scientist, Dr. Terry Martin of Ashland, a retired planetary specialist who worked on Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Mars missions, says life is indeed possible on Mars but he’s “not impressed” with Brandenburg’s theories, which dismiss hundreds of research papers and decades of date by top scientists in the field.

   “I dispute the evidence for ‘radioactive substances covering the surface.’ Where did he get such an idea? Not from the research I am familiar with.  What ‘nuclear catastrophe?’ We have a perfectly straightforward explanation for why Mars is red: oxidation of iron in the soil, as is true here. Why spend another minute on these ideas from left field?” he says.

   From his three decades at JPL, working with the Viking mission to Mars, the Mars Global Surveyor and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Martin said, in an interview, there’s a “good chance Mars had life billions of years ago.”

   Mars was pelted by comets, which are known to bring water to planets and it could have had an atmosphere as good as Earth’s, he notes. Since Mars has one-tenth the mass of Earth, it would have cooled to liveable temperatures much sooner than us, but, with less gravity, says Martin, could have lost its atmosphere, warmth and water into space.

   With meteors blasting chunks of Mars off into space -- and some of them falling on Earth -- this planet could well have been “seeded” with small organisms inside Martian rocks, Martin says, “in which case, we are the Martians.”

   Earth did better at retaining its life, says Martin, because, being bigger, our volcanism is still going on (providing heat), our gravity holds the atmosphere in place and our larger magnetic field shields life from harmul ions streaming from the sun.

   Brandenburg says Martian maps clearly show an ocean shoreline with smoother terrain below the line and rough above. Martin says lots of scientists think that’s possible but there’s not 100 percent agreement on it.

   While Brandenburg says terraforming -- making Mars earthlike and growing a biosphere -- is possible, Martin says it would be “really tough and take a long time” because water can’t be transported there.

   Martian rocks blown from the Red Planet have been discovered in Antarctica, notes Martin, but none are proven to have traces of life.

   Enough scientists suspect life on Mars “or we wouldn’t be sending these expensive Mars Rovers. We’re searching for life because there’s a chance of finding it and to see if it’s habitable.”

   Both men note that if there’s life or fossils of life, they would likely be below the Mars surface.

   Brandenburg graduated in 1971 from then-Medord High School, where he built a laser for a science project, says his mother Muriel Brandenburg of Medford. He got his masters degree at University of California at Davis and his doctorate in theorestical plasma physics at UC extension with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

   Brandenburg is working on plasma propulsion, thought to be efficient for long distance space travel. He has written two science fiction novels about the UFO coverup and “Dead Mars, Dying Earth,” in 1999, about global warming impacts.

   His late father, also named John Brandenburg was a physician in Medford and a founder of Medford Clinic. The younger Brandenburg’s brother, Daniel Brandenburg is now a primary care physician in Medford, while his sister Molly Brandenburg is a cartoonist, writer and singer in Los Angeles.   ~







John Edwards:
Speaking Out Against the Politics of Fear

  Selling his health care plan in Medford yesterday, Democratic Vice Presidential nominee John Edwards demonstrated what made him a successful trial lawyer – the ability to get out amongst the folk and take that extra moment to “connect.”

   “He actually listened to me – he stood there and listened,” said Leslie Lee of the Applegate, who asked a complex health care question as the vice presidential nominee worked through the crowd after his talk at Medford Armory. “He was great, refreshing, from the heart and very forthright and I didn’t feel like he was leaving things to us.”

   Absent from the gathering were metal detectors, phalanxes of Secret Service agents and the quick exit of most national candidates. “And we have no loyalty oath to gain entrance,” said state house candidate Peter Buckley, to loud applause and laughter.

   The South Carolina senator received standing ovations and cheers half a dozen times, including once after pledging to “stop the politics of fear.” 

   “The fear driven down our throats in this country since 9/11 is really pathetic, really sad,” said Vicki Mansfield of Medford. “It’s human nature to bite at that bait, but it’s creating a nation of political hypochondriacs, who buy it and vote for him (Bush) out of fear, when health care is the real issue in this country.”

   “He was truthful and upfront about the prescription drugs (allowing cheap, legal drugs from Canada),” said Rose Feryanitz of Medford, who was dropped from affordable drug programs for seniors in last year’s budget cuts. “We need to come together on things like this. The fear tactics are tearing us apart.”

   John and Nina Schmidt of Jacksonville said they’re unable to afford $1,200 a month in health insurance payments and, despite college degrees, unable to find enough work, after being recently laid off.

   “We’re paying for insurance out of our retirement,” said Nina Schmidt. “It sounds like if they can find the support to put a health plan together, and I think they can, then they have the courage needed to make it happen.”

   Added her husband John, “9/11 has been terrible, of course, but they’ve exploited this terrorism thing, so it’s 90 percent of what they talk about, while they avoid the big issues at home, like health care and the absolutely outrageous national debt they’ve run up. These problems are too big now for Kerry to solve, but he can make progress.”

   Holding the triangularly folded flag of her late son, killed in Iraq, medic Jody Yap of Talent said that while she didn’t hear the specifics of a substantial health plan in Edwards’ talk, she “would give him two thumbs up because he clearly cares about people, not just politics and money.”

   Dr. Robin Miller of Medford also said her question of Edwards, asking for specifics on a proposed health care plan, was not sufficiently answered, “although I did hear it would have reduced premiums and a national health plan for children early on.”

   Donis Rothstein of Ashland, on the other hand, said she felt “revved up with the specifics and definite plans I hear, especially in the area of health care.” The “politics of fear” statement meant, to her, that “people are so scared, they can’t think straight and their minds shut down.”

   Her friend Merrilynn Young of Ashland called the talk “really good, intelligent, not platitudes, which is very different. I don’t know how people can say there’s little difference between Republicans and Democrats, when one comes from fear and one from love.”

   Paula Sohl of Ashland she didn’t hear what she wanted about how the “stranglehold” of the medical insurance industry on health care could be broken. “I agree with his politics of fear statement,” she added, noting that it needs to be addressed in the home and in the how we treat children before it can be lessened in education and health care.

   Kelly Steele, spokesman for the Oregon Democratic Party, working in the Rogue Valley during the campaign, said the Kerry-Edwards ticket is polling high here, in this traditionally conservative region because 180,000 Oregonians have lost health coverage during the Bush term, while 420,000 others were unable to afford it in the first place.

   “These are independent, rather than conservative voters here and it’s not conservative (of Bush) to blow a record surplus (in the federal budget). That’s why independents here, and even some Republicans, are starting to swing to Kerry-Edwards.”

   Volunteer coordinator Linda McGraw of the regional Kerry-Edwards campaign said she’s been “walking around with tears in my eyes telling people I think we’re actually going to win it” and that she feels a shift in values going on where “patriotism, instead of being afraid to speak out and walking the party line, will mean once again being able to speak out in favor of values like hard work, kindness and fairness.”   ~









Amy Goodman & Robert Scheer:
A Corporatized Media

   The news media in America are “cowed,” in disarray and, because they’re afraid of losing market share, are holding back on their traditional role of criticizing the powerful, say two noted alternative journalists – Amy Goodman, host of “Democracy Now!” and columnist Robert Scheer.

   The pair speak and share in a panel discussion, “Is the Mainstream Media Doing Its Job?” It’s at 7:30 p.m., Friday, Britt Auditorium, Southern Oregon University. Tickets are $10 -- $5 for people under 25 or over 60.

   U.S. journalism has reached an “all-time low.” It covers personalities, not movements, as in times past, said Goodman, whose show is syndicated on 200 radio and tv outlets. “The media is the most powerful institution in the world but it’s cowed and all we get is more static, distortion and lies.”

   Consolidation of media under a few powerful corporate “moguls” is destroying democracy, Goodman added, in a phone interview. “It doesn’t matter how many channels you have but who owns them.” 

   “That’s how I lost my column after 30 years,” said Scheer, noting it was cut from the Los Angeles Times after the paper was bought by the Chicago Tribune, owner of 11 daily newspapers and 13 tv stations. “They care less about freedom of the press than the profit picture.”

   The American press “is in disarray and has lost its sense of authority,” said Scheer, who won notoriety for his in-depth interviews of five recent presidents – including Carter, who confided “lust in his heart” for women.

   The U.S. political system was historically held accountable by both the opposition party and the press but with the “deterioration” of the political system, that check is gone and “I’m concerned for our democracy,” said Scheer. “You point at the barbarians at the gate (terrorists) and use that to chip away at liberties.”

   That process was well underway but 9/11 “opened the door wide,” he added, in a phone interview.

   Goodman and Scheer are on an 80-city speaking tour, promoting new books, Goodman’s Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders, and the People Who Fight Back – and Scheer’s Playing President, a profile of the presidents he’s interviewed. It does not include George W. Bush.

   Scheer’s interviews were approached by the presidents “with a seriousness of purpose” about a “serious enterprise” (the presidency) and “that’s something that couldn’t happen now.”

   A great many controversial stories go unreported by the mainstream media, said Goodman, including “antiwarrors,” the “thousands of soldiers who refuse to deploy or redeploy to Iraq – and this runs across the political spectrum.”

   Her interviews, she added, show considerable opposition to the war in the ranks and among Pentagon brass and “these are brave people, not a fringe minority.”

   The explosion of media on the internet and cable, ironically, have not increased dialog or openness, but rather the opposite, Scheer said, “because these (media) are very easy to manipulate. The 9/11 attack put a weight on the media it couldn’t stand. The media panicked and decided if they raise a fuss about anything, they’ll lose market share. So George W gets a free ride.”

   Goodman added, “We’re not supposed to be for the state. We’re supposed to be critical, not megaphones, not a conveyor belt for the state. It’s not just Bush, it’s the Democrats, too, creating this silenced majority.”

   The media’s failure is “endemic” and will not lessen with a change in administration, said Scheer. However, noted Goodman, it is up to the media to fulfill its traditional role of educating the electorate, teaching them to be “critical, but not cynical.”

   Scheer was not allowed to do his customary in-depth interview with President George W. Bush. Of the previous presidents, since 1968, Scheer said Clinton was the smartest and Nixon was the best prepared, achieving feats like medical coverage, environmental protections and starting the end of the Cold War, things that “would make him look like a flaming liberal today.”

   Serving on the panel with Goodman and Scheer will be Ralph Temple of the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon and Bob Hunter, editor, Medford Mail Tribune.   ~




Bill Bradbury: It’s Getting Warmer

While global warming will make Western and Coastal Oregon the new Napa Valley, bringing a boom in winemaking, the downside is that it has already shrunken Cascade glaciers, raised ocean wave heights and promises to submerge the airport and downtown of Portland.

   That’s the dire forecast of Secretary of State Bill Bradbury, in a well-attended talk Thursday at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Forensics Lab here.

   Bradbury, who was trained in the climate change presentation years ago by former Vice President Al Gore, has focused it on the Northwest, including predictions that, because of global warming, the Rogue Valley will have less snow pack, a hike in summer temperatures of 15 degrees by 2080, earlier snow melt, more rain, more flooding, more streams going dry in summer, fewer fish, more wildfires and less conifer trees.

   A dramatic PowerPoint picture presentation showed shrinking glaciers on Mt. Hood, leading to enormous debris flows that in recent years have wiped out highways and railroads and led to creation of a new delta where Hood River flows into the Columbia River.

   The powerful Vernonia flood of 2007 brought the highest sustained wind ever recorded on the West Coast – and such “100-year floods” can now be expected every few years, he said.

   The Columbia River is 68 to 71 degrees in August and September, uncomfortable for salmon, and by 2040, Bradbury said, that river and parts of the Rogue River will be 75 degrees, which is deadly for the fish.

   Global heating will devastate the Napa-Sonoma wine industry, but pinot noir grapes will find Oregon about the right temperature, he noted.

   “I don’t expect the wine industry to be in Napa, but,” he joked, “it’s one of those little opportunities for us.”

   Bradbury said “as we are painfully aware,” wildfires are increasing at a radical rate, which he demonstrated on a graph, showing about five times the fires now as in the 90s – this due to warming and drying of the climate.

   Many climate models have proved off the mark by underestimating the impact of greenhouse gases, Bradbury said, noting that a 5 degree increase in atmospheric temperature would not be evenly distributed but would likely end up as 1 degree at the equator and 12 degrees at poles, leading to earlier ocean level rises than anticipated.

   The effect could be summed up as “the worse it gets, the worse it gets,” he said, because the warmer it gets, the more ice melts and the less it reflects sunlight off the planet, so it gets still warmer faster.

   The Artic polar ice used to cover an area about the size of the lower 48 states, but now it would only cover the part west of the Mississippi – and the Greenland ice cap is melting twice as fast as it was a decade ago, he said. Ocean waves striking Oregon average 4 meters high, compared to 3 meters a few decades ago.

   If most of the Greenland cap and half the Antarctic ice melted, it would raise sea levels 20 feet, it would inundate the perimeter of San Francisco Bay (but not the hilly city itself), he said, adding that, globally, most of the nations it would submerge are undeveloped countries – the people least to blame for warming.

   Most of the graphs on Bradbury’s charts were steady through the years, but began a steep spike about 1980. Carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, held at around 300 parts per million until that period – and is now 387 ppm.

   The atmosphere has heated by one degree in that period and Bradbury noted that a 3 to 4 degree rise would lead to extinction for a fifth of living things.

   As solutions to the crisis, Bradbury encouraged the crowd of about 50 people to take action within the Oregon Environmental Council, demand their governments join an international climate treaty, offset their personal carbon footprint, support passage of helpful legislation, plant trees and buy from businesses that are “sustainable, just and prosperous.”

   Oregon is number one among states in its enlightened, green policies, he said, and the 2009 Oregon Legislature will present a slate of new such bills, including the capping of carbon emissions, which “is controversial and people are already trying to kill it.”

   Although the task is global and may seem daunting, said Bradbury, “each citizen must stand up and make sure of being heard. Release your creativity, inspiration and innovation. The world is open to opportunities to solve these problems. The choice and the responsibility is ours.”   ~





Farmers as Writers:
It Takes the Same Powers of Observation

“I have never known a wetter, or danker Northwest winter than this January’s damp and deep nesting of rain. I have never known even what it is to turn pallid under my tangled blond hair, this California girl, a daughter of the endless summer, the girl who picks oranges from trees in mid-winter. The girl who knows ever-blooming jasmine and bougainvillea, palm trees and avocados. Here, I am a woman trapped under gray skies that push down on me like heavy weights. I go to the outside, to the top of a hill in this temporary wetland where white oaks are tall and bursting with green lichen and cottonwoods drip catkins onto the ground. In spring, the smell of balsam will be a warm tonic spread thick over the air, raw and sweet until the white cottony hair takes to the sky floating over water and wind. I go now to really feel winter, and maybe, to beckon spring.”   
                                                   --Melissa Matthewson
                    A Spring Soliloquy
                    www.farmlitgirl.blogspot.com


   Farmers are a lot like writers. They’re observant, patient and take time to make something grow – so it’s not surprising that a lot of farmers here (they seem to be clustered in the Applegate) are taking up writing, both in a literary way and to communicate via blogs with their customers.

   “Most farmers are pretty innovative and creative and have a lot to say. Farming is an interesting challenge and a creative lifestyle,” says Melissa Matthewson, who is getting several of her farmer-writer colleagues together to teach a “Farmers as Writers” workshop in October at OSU Extension.

   The panel of teachers will tell how to set up a blog and submit manuscripts for publication. Matthewson, an Extension agent, posts her writings on www.blogspot.com and www.wordpress.com, where they become permanent “published” articles, can be accompanied by photos and are open to postings by others who read your material.

   “Blogging has become a great marketing and educational tool. I use it for nonfiction, essays, nature writing, landscape and place-based writing,” says Matthewson, who hopes to form a writer’s group out of the workshop, where participants can read and review each others’ writings and offer encouragement.

   Applegate writer and blogger Chris Jagger sticks with the stuff of real life, mixed with passages about farm chores, then, fulfilling the need for marketing, tells blog readers what they can expect to find for sale at upcoming Growers Markets in Medford and Ashland.

   “It’s good for those of us who farm for a living and find time to expand on our thoughts about what we’re doing. I use it to keep in touch with my customers. The Growers Markets are too busy to talk to everyone. I write anything, farm-related stuff and sometimes it can take a political bent about how organic farming fits into the big picture. Sometimes it’s what’s going on with my family,” says Jagger, who wrote and posted pictures about the recent birth of his son Damien.
  
   The connection between farming and writing? “Farming is a good personal expression of self and so is writing. They’re both art. People may think we’re just groveling in the dirt all day, but it does give you time to think about stuff that’s bottled up all the time,” says Jagger, who will co-teach the class.

   Kirsten Shockey of Melonia Farm in the Applegate, another co-teacher of the workshop, uses writing “to capture the events of the day, keep track of memorable things the children do and serve as a creative outlet because we have a lot of stories to tell.”

   Shockey uses writing to share the message of the agrarian lifestyle being discovered by a new generation of younger, organic farmers who have a deep feeling for the land and nature, she says.

   “When people buy local (produce), they are buying into that story and they want to know that story,” Shockey notes.

   Talking about the ties between farming and writing, Erin Volheim of the Little Applegate, observes, “With gardening and farming, you’re always observing plants, weather, irrigation. You’re using the key components of what writers need in order to write. There’s a lot of the contemplative aspect that informs your writing. If you want to nurse that a little bit, just go out to your garden.”

   Volheim writes for the newsletter “In Good Tilth,” published by Oregon Tilth – and wrote a long study of the bee-killing Colony Collapse Disorder. An upcoming article will explore how farmers are adjusting to climate change.   ~




“We were at the midwife's office today for a routine visit and she was checking the baby out by feeling around on Melanie's belly... a little squeeze here, a light push there, and then she said ,"Yep, that's the head, that's the butt, and there's an arm." I said ,"No way" She replied with "Come here and feel for yourself."

”The midwife guided me through it (and we made sure it wasn't uncomfortable at all for Melanie) and I was feeling around and found the head, and the butt, and then the moment of truth, I found the little arm as the baby swept it's arm from one side to the other. I was nearly knocked back by disbelief. That's my child in there, and the baby just gave me a high five. I really can't describe in words the amazement I felt at that exact moment. Things changed forever right there. I even stated that out loud to Melanie and our midwife.”
    --Chris Jagger, Blue Fox Farm, the Applegate
    “Amazing” on www.bluefoxfarm.blogspot.com


“The steady increase in beekeeper migration has masked the issue of native
pollinator decline from public awareness… Instead of sinking more resources into
band-aiding a defective system, maybe the message we are receiving from
the honeybees is that monocrop export agriculture dependent on migratory
beekeeping is just not sustainable. Yet, sudden blocks to migratory
beekeeping would have catastrophic results on the global food supply.
In the meantime, perhaps we should downsize the scale of our agricultural
practices, put our energy toward more small-scale farms and community
gardens. Direct funding toward increasing biodiversity on our farms and
other efforts to encourage our native pollinators. Increase support to
programs, locally and globally, that give folks the skills to grow food
for their communities, while repealing trade agreements that make
importing food cheaper than growing it nearby.

“CCD represents an opportunity to listen and take action. A time to respect
and restore our connection to native pollinators, rather than buying into
the short-term sustenance of the commercial growers' bank account.”

                     --Erin Volheim
                    “Colony Collapse Disorder”
                    In Oregon Tilth newsletter








Swap Till You Drop for Xmas

In a holiday shopping spree without credit cards, checks or cash, some 400 people jammed the Old Armory here to drop of stuff they no longer want – and grab new stuff they can put under the Christmas tree for others.

   It was the seventh annual Abundance Swap and, in the words of its originator Jeff Golden, “We created it because the 5 a.m. holiday shopping frenzies at the mall seemed so off-track with the meaning of the holiday and we wanted a way to hold onto the gift-giving but without the frenzy.”

   In three shifts, according to the color of their name tag, people got to cruise the many aisles of free stuff, most of it garage sale caliber, but always holding out treasures – that special book or CD, oodles of kitchen wares, colorful clothing, framed art, cocktail glasses, a metal detector, a driftwood table, boom boxes, costume jewelry.

   “It’s a wonderful way to let go of items,” said Amy Warn, who was offering a serving set. “I found this amazing wool knit cap from Chile, with the tag still on, for my boyfriend.”

   “I loved it. I got place mats for my sister in Santa Fe and a bunch of thank-you cards,” said Joany Franklin. “I’ve been getting out of the whole consumer thing, just don’t like it, so this is great and I love the friendly community event.”

   Bill Kauth, of the event’s creators, said 15 to 20 other cities have gone to the Abundance Swap’s Web site www.abundanceswap.org, and learned how to stage the event.

   “When you create an opportunity for people to get together without spending money, it feels wonder and they’re doing what they love most, being with other people,” said Kauth.

   Kaia Hilson, “shopping” with her small daughter Maggie, said she was able to find gifts for the entire family – a big help in a depressed economy.

   Trying on a knight’s helmet, Jonnie Dale noted that she’d donated a nice Eddie Bauer sweater, some brand new sandals and a lego set – and had her eye on some dragon books.

   “It’s fun to see what people are giving away and letting someone else enjoy,” said Dale. “I see a lot of gifts that people got in the past but didn’t use.”

   After netting a collection of classical music CDs, Julie Norman called herself a lover of second-hand stuff who welcomed “this non-consumer side of the holidays.”

   As the anticipation built for the first round of gift-scooping, Golden told a tale about a wise elder that said he had two wolves inside him, one greedy and one loving and sharing. A youngster, said Golden, asked the wise man which wolf won out. “The one I feed,” he replied.

   Golden lauded the generosity of attendees in letting go of many clearly valuable goods and joked, “There’s also that terrific item in the corner that we have our eye on and we want to get right to it, but remember to take pleasure that someone, if not you, is going to open that terrific present.”   ~









Women Ministers: Taking Down the Walls

  A man out front of Medford’s First Presbyterian Church recently has been stopping parishioners, telling them not to “waste their time” going to hear a woman minister – and that she “should know better” than to take the role of leader in a church.

   It’s not the first such incident for the church’s minister, Joyce DeGraaff. Once, a man seeking to get married told her he wanted a man (an assistant pastor) to perform the ceremony because he wanted “steak, not hamburger” for his wedding.

   “It was a cheap shot,” said DeGraaff. “We declined to do the wedding at all. I’ve even had transients at our food bank refuse to take help from me because I’m a woman minister. I had to laugh, yet it is abhorrent.”

   The incidents point to a centuries-old notion that, because God is seen as male, then men are closer to him and more able to convey his message, said Wendy McAninch-Ruenzi, [cq] parish associate with Ashland’s United Church of Christ and former campus pastor with Southern Oregon University.

   “It’s a subconscious process, expecting a male messenger – and when the messenger is female it creates a cognitive dissonance, a disturbance in what you expect. The response is to question what the female is saying, rather than to accept that it comes from on high. There’s more acceptance of direction offered by males and more balking at females.”

   Some strides have been made since the main Protestant denominations decreed equality for women ministers half a century ago, but, even with women filling about half the spots at seminaries now, only six women lead one of Jackson County’s 200 churches. Many women are associate pastors or deacons here.

   Area women ministers, along with dozens of associate pastors and deacons participate in a support group – Southern Oregon Women in Ministries. They generally report warm support from their congregations, with a scattering of cynics in the beginning.

   “I’ve experienced no discrimination,” said Rector Anne Bartlett of Ashland’s Trinity Episcopal Church. “What usually happens is that after about six months, people sidle up and say: I have to tell you that when I heard we were going to have a woman priest, I was appalled, but now I just don’t know what I was thinking.”

   “I’ve heard a lot of horror stories, but, except for a few crank letters in the beginning quoting Paul, I’ve never had any problems,” said Caren Caldwell, minister of Ashland’s United Church of Christ.  “The children who’ve grown up in this church think a minister is supposed to be female and that’s how they cast the genders when they play church.”

   When McAninch-Ruenzi graduated from Harvard Divinity School in 1982, she expected a “call” (hiring) early on. It took her two years and she saw it as discrimination. “I wasn’t happy about it. If half of seminary students are women and less than 10 percent of ministers are women, then something happened on the way to the pulpit. Many gave up and many weren’t hired.”

   McAninch-Ruenzi was a founding member of the National Association of Presbyterian Clergy Women, whose mission is to support and advocate for women ministers. “If you speak up,” she observed, “it can make you less employable. That’s true in any walk of life.”

   Rabbi Jackie Brodsky of Ashland, who serves temples in Redding and Coos Bay said most members have gotten past prejudice, but some are “still adjusting” to the ordaining of rabbis in 1973. “Prejudice against women runs deep and wide. It’s subtle.”

   When one member requested a lay chaplain for her death counseling and funeral, Brodsky later learned from a third party it was because of Brodsky’s gender. “It’s prejudice and it does exist. You move on. You can’t let it take the wind out of your sails.”

   Alice Knotts, pastor for Talent’s United Methodist Church and Rogue Rock Ministries describes being a woman minister as “relatively easy compared with 32 years ago, when I started.” Knotts was being considered for minister in another Oregon town when a family invited her to dinner to explain that “women shouldn’t teach men about religious life.”

   Knotts said it was “a shame” this area doesn’t use more women ministers because, based on the large female attendance in seminary, “God seems to be calling women to the ministry without finding a gender issue.”

   Women ministers have served in the Unitarian church since the Civil War, “but that doesn’t mean it’s been easy, because we’re dealing with the U.S. culture here,” said Patt [cq] Herdklotz [cq], minister of Ashland’s Unitarian-Universalist Church. “Unitarians have always been deeply involved in the feminist, suffragist and feminist theology movements and now about half our ministers are women.”

   Opponents of women ministers, DeGraaff notes, often cite first Corinthians, where Paul says, “Let your women keep silence in churches, for it is not permitted for them to speak, but they are commanded to be under obedience.”

   Having studied original Greek and Hebrew texts, DeGraff said they meant something quite different – that in ancient times, men studied the liturgy and that if women didn’t understand it, they shouldn’t ask during services, but wait till they got home and ask their husbands.

   “Women had leadership roles in churches since day one. Jesus and Paul were both very supportive of women. They’ve found 1st and 2d century mosaics showing women baptizing and sharing the sacraments. Mary the mother prophesied and the risen Christ chose to appear first to a woman, Mary Magdalene.”

   The gender picture in church has a decided political element, said Caldwell. “The more liberal churches and the ones like ours, which have no hierarchy above us that can tell a local church what to do, present the fewest hoops for women to jump through.”

   In the 1980s, when Herdklotz worked in Religious Leaders for Choice, she attempted dialogue with pro-life lay and clergy protestors in Wichita, Kan., but “I saw I was having a great deal of difficulty getting respect for my credentials because I was a woman, so I passed my job off to a man,” she said.

   The Unitarian church in the 1970s resolved to “ardently” root out any patriarchal bias in its worship, said Herdklotz. In sermons, she avoids the masculine pronoun, repeating the word God as often as necessary. Bartlett often “throws in the pronoun ‘she’ to show that God is beyond gender.” Brodsky also sidesteps the gender pronouns, calling God The Joyous Divine One, The Holy One or The Eternal.

   Bartlett’s two ordained deacons are both women and, during services, she has to cast men in other roles “to make sure we also have a strong male presence at the altar.” Episcopal priests are called father, so Bartlett, not liking the term mother, has picked another, gender-free word -- “Rev.”

   Despite low percentages of women in ministry, the tide has turned, said Knotts. “There’s a huge spiritual summit going on all over. It’s pulling down the dividing walls between secular and sacred and between the genders and bringing things together to make them whole.”   ~







John Francis: Making a
Big Statement by Not Speaking

  John Francis, the tall, lanky, banjo-playing black man who went 17 years without speaking and has strode a quarter million miles around the continent as “Planetwalker,” is back Monday in Ashland, one of his home towns, to spread the word on peace and environmental harmony.

    Francis, 59, who got his bachelor’s degree at Southern Oregon State College in 1982, became inspired to his pedestrian ways when viewing the devastation to wildlife from the 1970 oil spill off San Francisco.

   “I knew I had to take some responsibility for that – and for the world demand for oil – and that it wasn’t going to get better till I took the first step,” said Francis, who, starting at his graduation from SOSC, walked across the U.S. and back, stopping in Missoula, Mont. to get his master’s degree and in Madison, Wisc., to get his PhD.

   His doctoral dissertation on oil spills came along at a fortuitous moment – the 1986 Exxon Valdez oil spill – and he was hired (still in silence mode) to help the U.S. Coast Guard write its protocol for such disasters.

   Author this year of “Planetwalker: Saving the World One Step at a Time,” Francis will speak at 7:30 p.m., Monday at the SOU Schneider Lecture Series, Meese Auditorium of the Art Bldg.  His talk is entitled, “How One Pilgrim Can Make a Difference; Steps Toward Sustainability and Peace.” He will also be interviewed at 9 a.m., Monday on Jefferson Exchange radio, 1230-AM.

   In his walks, Francis was treated the same in both red and blue states, except for one moment in California when, with a racial epithet, someone put a gun to his head.

   “It has brought people together, the very American image of a black man walking down the highway with a banjo, which is a very African instrument. People waved and were always happy to see me,” said Francis, in an interview from his home in Point Reyes, Calif.

   Francis began walking in the seventies, arriving in Southern Oregon, spending a winter in the Kalmiopsis Wilderness in a miner’s cabin, then getting his B.S. degree here, with emphasis in math, environmental science and creative writing.

   One of his professors, Lawson Inada put on multi-media performances, reading his poetry, with Francis on banjo and a mime acting out what Francis couldn’t speak.

   “He is a courageous man of great integrity, always furthering the message of environmental balance and human understanding,” said Inada. “He presents a challenge for everyone by saying a lot with just a few gestures.”

   Said public radio talk show host Jeff Golden, “John and I would talk, me with words and him with everything else.  He got me thinking about how I was living my life more directly and clearly than anyone else I hung out with in those days.”

   As he walked, Francis began to understand the power of silence as a tool of communication.

   “I was silent for one day and started to learn so much about other people,” said Francis, who is a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador. “I learned I hadn’t been listening. It was a tearful experience. I realized I was only listening to people long enough to figure out what they were saying, so I could formulate my argument against it.  In silence, I learned that instead of being defensive, I was getting a lot of new information.”

   His years of walking “changed how I thought about time and place,” said Francis, so that he realized “home became wherever I was.”

   Francis supports himself and his mission with contributions and book sales via his website, www.planetwalk.org.  He walked this year from Cape May, NJ to Philadelphia and next year will complete the Philadelphia-to-Madison leg.

  “Francis is one of the least assuming people you are likely to meet, with an almost tangible personal integrity,” said SOU Prof. John Richards, organizer of the Monday lecture. “His message, as much lived as spoken, is that without anger, but by living our own lives with integrity, we can heal the planet and build peace, and those two processes are one and the same.”

   After years of seeing the planet from ground-level, Francis said he feels the things have actually improved, with more organic gardening, pollution control and work to save endangered species.

   “We’re exactly where we should be now. I have great hope. We’re on a journey to a place of less suffering and war. Peace is a dynamic, where we will be learning to do things that we enjoy doing,” said Francis.

   “That’s what this journey has been for me. It’s fun. I’m doing what I like, playing music and getting paid for it. I’m not getting rich, but it supports me and I hope it’s helping.”   ~





Jamie Auchinchloss: The Man
Who Knew (and Loved) Kennedy

   The last time Jamie Auchincloss saw his brother-in-law John Kennedy, a month before the assassination, he thought to himself, “This is the last time I’ll see him alive.”

   Many people had that same feeling, which was enhanced by the fact the president was in pain all his life and seemed in a great hurry to absorb a lot of information and get a lot done, said Auchincloss, 56, a resident of Ashland’s west hills for the last eight years.

   “He thought a lot about death,” Auchincloss reflected. Then, he added, there was JFK’s favorite poem, “I have a rendezvous with death,” by Alan Seeger. It ends, “And I to my pledged word am true, I shall not fail that rendezvous.”

    Sitting in his book-bedecked Craftsman home, surrounded by Kennedy memorabilia, Auchincloss, half-brother of late First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, slips easily into his “rendezvous with destiny,” to be the storyteller of Camelot and a member of “an extremely image conscious family, that wants control over history and is not forgiving of people who talk.”

   But talk he does, sharing his countless Kennedy tales – in a presentation called “Mud Wrestling with History” -- before rapt audiences like the Unitarian Fellowship here last Sunday. He hasn’t written a book on it as yet.

   Auchincloss was 16 and sitting in class when he got the feared news of JFK’s death. He went to babysit young John-John and Caroline Kennedy, keeping them away from the television until their mother could get home and break the news in her own way.

   “I remember every moment of those four days,” said Auchincloss, who can be seen in the funeral procession, right behind then-Atty. Gen. Robert Kennedy and Mrs. Kennedy. “I was proud to be there. My love of history took over and I realized I was at the quintessential ground zero of history.”

   Citing “a lot of doubts about who did it and why,” Auchincloss clearly rejects the lone gunman conclusion of the “group of older white men” who wrote the Warren Report on the assassination -- and who “did a rush job and wanted to reach the same conclusion” generally held by the media and public. The most likely hitmen? The mob, he indicated.

   In his Kennedy talks, Auchincloss, a former docent at the National Archives and noted presidential historian (of all 20th century presidencies, especially Franklin D. Roosevelt’s), said he gets asked five questions most – 1) Did Jack and Jackie really love each other? 2) Who were the true loves of their lives? 3) If Jack had lost in 1964, would they have divorced? 4) Would Jack have got rid of Lyndon Johnson as vice president in 1964 and if so, who would have replaced him, so as not to impede Bobby Kennedy’s succession to the presidency? 5) Would Jack have got us out of Vietnam?  And, of course, who really killed JFK?

   The answers to all the questions – wish I knew but I don’t.

   Although Auchincloss describes his relationship with Jackie as uncomfortable – “I think she was allergic to me” – he was “dazzled” by JFK when then then-senator from Massachusetts came into his life in 1953, courting and marrying his half-sister (they had the same mother, Janet Lee Auchincloss).

   “I idolized him,” said Auchincloss, “He charged me with a passion for history. You wanted to spend as much time as possible with him. You had to bone up on history when he was coming to visit, so you could keep up with him and keep him interested in talking to you.”

   The rich, powerful and attractive JFK, he said, could have married anyone he wished but that Jackie was “very carefully chosen” to give the Kennedys access to a conservative, wealthy family with power connections on the Republican side. In the glorious wedding, Auchincloss carried Jackie’s 50-foot train.

   In stays at the White House, Auchincloss, then in his early teens, played a game with the president, serving as something of an “information squire,” rising before JFK to read the nation’s newspapers, especially the columnists, then waiting with Caroline and John-John by the presidential bedroom door for him to wake up.

   “As his children raced around the room, the president would ask, what does (James) Reston say today? What does (Herb) Caen say? And if you didn’t know exactly the right answers, he could go through the day thinking that columnist was a bastard.”

   Auchincloss would dig up and feed quotes to the eager JFK mind and later, as an intern to Sen. Claiborne Pell, D-R.I., he would sniff the hustings with vigor, bringing back the shifting moods of the electorate – such as unhappiness with the president’s pro-civil rights stance among Italian-Americans.

   JFK and Jackie enjoyed ratcheting then-banal American tastes up a notch, making fads with chintz curtains, Rhine and Riesling wines (the country only drank Chablis then) and George Catlin’s American Indian art.

   Kennedy’s comment to his mother-in-law, who inspired Jackie’s chintz fascination -- and all the bland colors that had to match it -- was, “Are we becoming prisoners of beige?”

   Auchincloss joined the Kennedy’s conspiracy of culture, stumbling on the then- unknown Grand Canyon Suite by Ferde Grofe’ and playing it for Jackie as she water-colored one day. In no time, she’d invited Grofe’ to play the piece at the White House – making it an instant American classic.

   As president, Kennedy loved to playfully bend the rules that would apply to the less powerful. At a dinner in the home of his father-in-law Hugh Auchincloss, Kennedy waxed romantic, toasting his love for the beautiful Jackie, then bade all toss the expensive champagne crystal in the fireplace. After a repeat of the gesture with further grand toasting and smashing, frugal Scotsman Hugh Auchincloss brought out the dime store champagne glasses, said Jamie.

   The Auchincloss vignettes are endless:

Kennedy took a listening trip to the hustings, saying on his return, “I listened carefully and now I’m against my whole program.”
The Camelot myth of his administration was devised by Jackie after his death and he would have found it “effeminate and quite silly.”
Running for president as the first Catholic, JFK said, “I don’t know what all the fuss is about – I’m not a very good Catholic.”
Kennedy was a master of non-commitment, but it wasn’t because he couldn’t take a stand; he just wanted the right solution and he didn’t care if it came from Democrats or Republicans.
JFK had boundless curiosity and hunger for learning – a “constant race with boredom.” If you were too slow, uninformed or uninteresting, he would interrupt you and question someone else.
Kennedy saw courage as a supreme value. After former presidential nominee and UN ambassador Adlai Stevenson admitted being afraid to fly in weather, JFK, whenever a storm came up, would joke, “Let’s call Adlai here.”
Jack liked to play games to teach courage – taking Auchincloss far out to sea in a Sunfish (a surfboard with a sail) to chase a toy sailboat, both of them leaping into the deep repeatedly to fetch it.
“Accurate,” said Auchincloss of the Secret Service code name for Jackie – “Bunny.”
In addition to predicting Kennedy’s death in Oct. 1963, Auchincloss predicted Jackie’s premature birth (by three weeks) of John-John, advising JFK not to fly to Miami for family Thanksgiving or he would miss it. The birth happened that night.
Once, on vacation, the president wanted to drive a Mercury sedan and let the presidential limo follow. A Marine waved Kennedy by, then saluted the limo. JFK stopped and ribbed the embarrassed Marine, “You salute the office, not the car.”
Becoming a dad opened Kennedy up emotionally and the cousins envied his children for JFK’s warm parenting.
Kennedy called Auchincloss’s mother, asking her to intervene on Jackie’s spending habits.
JFK allowed McGeorge Bundy only seven minutes to do his national security briefings, but took a half-hour for frequent presidential haircuts. “Mac” joked, “If you took as much time for briefings as you do for hair, you’d be a better president.” Kennedy riposted, “If you had better hair, you’d be president.”
Driving with Auchincloss to the Christmas tree lighting at the Ellipse, a 90-second trip, Kennedy rewrote an entire speech he’d never seen, then frowned at the lad for waving to “my citizens.”

   Kennedy’s womanizing was common knowledge in the clan – and Jackie’ marriage echoed the pattern of her parents.  Her father, John “Black Jack” Bouvier was a notorious philanderer whose wife had to put up with the same pain of infidelities.

   When Jackie miscarried in 1956, Kennedy stayed in Europe with paramours – “He liked multiple partners” – so his brother Bobby severely scolded JFK and came to comfort Jackie, a relationship that would continue till Bobby was killed.

   When Jackie called JFK in Los Angeles to congratulate him on his nomination as president, she could clearly hear he was in bed with someone, Auchincloss said.

   He tells a story that obviously warms him. Kennedy pulled the pants off his two-year old sun by the swimming pool. John-John calls him a poo-poo head. JFK postures a mock wound, wrist to brow, “No one has ever called the President of the United States a poo-poo head!”

   Auchincloss smiles at the memory, studying a Christmas card signed to him from the presidential couple and dated “Christmas 1963,” which would have been a month after the assassination. “Eerie, isn’t it?”

   The well-hidden sexual scandals were prerogatives of Kennedy’s station at the time and, like most men then, he used them -- but the main thrust of Auchincloss’s talks is so that history won’t let it be forgot that the Kennedys, for one brief shining moment, were human beings, with family, love, dreams and pain, like everyone else.   ~





Kerul Dyer: Rocking the Boat on Campus

Southern Oregon University has long been thought of as a politically sleepy campus, but Kerul Dyer may have changed that.

   A senior in journalism and international studies, the 29-year old Dyer has firmly grabbed the reins of student activism.

   In two years on campus, she started the Media Collective and got student funding to publish the thrice-yearly alternative campus newspaper “Soapbox.”

   She organized camp-in protests against SOU-brand clothing made in foreign sweatshops, directed a student caravan to the Seattle World Trade Organization gathering and worked in protest media at the 2000 national political conventions

   “I’m a student activist – I’m not denying it,” said Dyer in her tiny Media Collective office at Stevenson Union.

   “I work to build coalitions that take action. A collectivist format is the most radical and controversial thing you can do in an individualist society, but it’s necessary because no one person is going to be able to make the changes needed for us to survive as a species.”

   If that sounds global, it’s intentional. Her Soapbox may have an article against pot-sniffing dorm staff, but most of it rails against genetic engineering, homophobia, exploitation of coffee harvesters, oppression in Latin America and air strikes against Iraq.

   “She emerged from nowhere to take center stage and make this University see another perspective,” said John Parman, editor of the mainstream Siskiyoui student newspaper. “She’s got a great personality. She grows on people. She’s very stubborn and she just goes at it again and again until she gets through.”

   Dyer was raised in a conservative Republican family in Corvallis, where her father is a developer and her mother a church choir director. One day, a high school teacher challenged her “America, love it or leave it” thinking, she said, and reading monkeywrenching novelist Edward Abbey did the rest.

   “We’re in a pretty bad situation. The north pole is melting. There’s an urgency now for all the peoples of the earth and all living things. I see no choice but to put my every waking moment into coming together in a common struggle. Even if the dominant power structure is against you, you have to focus on our similarities and our common plight.”

   Much of Dyer’s activism is pointed at media bias and at the “ridiculousness” of AP deciding what’s news for millions of people.

   The Soapbox is a blow against that monomedia, she said. “The best way to get freedom of speech is to own the press. If there’s no way to get the word out, then no one can hear you.”

   When she took 45 locals to Seattle’s WTO last year, they experienced “peaceful and constructive learning” but saw mainstream news reports focused only on violent rioters, she said.

   Working for the Independent Media Center (indymedia.org) at last year’s Republican National Convention, Dyer saw “incredibly harsh police brutality” against protesters, then attended a news conference where police denied any brutality, she said.

   “It was an incredible experience,” she said, one that helped her decide a career goal of being a writer for the alternative Zmagazine (zmag.org).

   Dyer shuns the notion of herself as a leader. “Leaders get jailed and killed.” She calls herself a “secular monk” with an appreciation of dada and the absurd in everything around her.

   However, she’s not one to stand outside the system and throw stones. She regularly takes broad-scope labor or pollution issues to the Associated Students and university administration, often getting their support -- or at least consideration.

   “It’s one of her strengths that she has the ability to rock the boat and still keep people talking to her,” said SOU journalism professor Kathy Campbell. “Out of her own gumption and brains, she has reenergized campus media and brought a much-needed world view, instead of just the personal or campus view that most universities have.”

   But she doesn’t kid herself that she’s part of the campus ingroup.

   “It (the SOU power structure) is not open. The marginalization of me is real obvious. The administration and Higher Ed doesn’t care what I think. The fact that I get encouragement from the administration means I’m not being effective. The moment I am, that will disappear. It’s very frustrating to be patronized like that.”

   One might wonder why Dyer positioned herself at politically remote SOU, instead of, say, UC Berkeley.

   “I can’t go to Berkeley and hang out with people who all agree with me. Being here is more of a challenge. The homogeneity here is frightening and the legacy of racism and imperialism is horrifying. But it’s not boring.

   “This is a place that needs some political activity – and it needs dialog. I get to know myself by empathizing with those I disagree with and by recognizing the common humanity in each person.”   ~




Randy Dollinger: the Homeless
Magazine Editor & City Council Candidate

   Randy Dolinger’s new magazine is different – and so is he. He’s the only homeless magazine editor-publisher in Ashland, maybe in the world. And his new publication, called “Express,” is dedicated, not to controversy and alternative pronouncements, but to story-telling.

   Dolinger, 51, can be seen most mornings in local coffee houses with an armful of his magazines, which he sells mostly through personal contact, asking townsfolk if they’ve read it or would like to contribute a real story of theirs from real life.

   “It’s so important, storytelling. It’s what I hear all day from people – their stories – and I say why don’t you write that down and we’ll put it in the next issue? Most people have never tried to write. I tell them, if you can talk, you can write.”

   Ashland has 100 to 150 accomplished writers, whom he solicits for stories along with “regular folks” -- by sending manuscripts to rdolinger@yahoo.com.

   How does a homeless man, sans computer, publish a literary magazine? With a little help from computer literate friends, who format the 8 x 11.5 inch magazine – and by taking each $10 or $20 he gets from sales down to the local print shop, where they crank out another armful of magazines for him.

   “This is something new. There’s no advertising. Virtually all other publications are full of concerns and issues. There’s so much of that, reading what’s wrong with the world. It pushes us apart. I wanted to put out universal themes that bring us closer together.”

   Among the stories – a vet recalls the flight over the Pacific to the Vietnam War, the importance of singing work songs in one’s daily life, an encounter with a Tibetan man in the park, who shares his thoughts about American materialism, a cartoon by Jonathan Frank, some poetry – and a chess lesson from Chaing Tzu (Dolinger), a former teen prodigy chess player in his native North Carolina.

   “It’s optimistic, well intended and done with integrity,” said Leif Joslyn of Talent, who wrote a story on love for an upcoming issue. “It’s fine to print people’s stories, as long as it doesn’t become a song of fools. It does need to attract good writers and address real world controversies.”

   The little magazine’s reception has been mostly positive, says Dolinger, with a few complaints about stories seeming to support he Chinese conquest of Tibet and proclaiming that gazing at the sun is healthful.

   Ashland political activist Gerald Cavanaugh, who wrote a story criticizing capitalism and institutionalized poverty, said the Express still “has bugs that need to be taken care of” and should think twice about publishing a “ridiculous” story justifying the Tibet invasion.

   “If it upsets some people, so be it,” Dolinger says. “If they sue me, what are they going to get – my tarp?”

   Dolinger plans to double the size of his magazine to 20 pages with the November issue, hoping to have a “fat, 60-page literary magazine” in six months – and if it means he’s suddenly got a job and income, “well, it might be nice to get a small house and type at my computer and have friends over.”

   Success, if it finds Dolinger, won’t come from ads, which he flatly calls “poison, something that degrades the human mind and spirit and influences every word that’s printed in a magazine or newspaper.”

   Life is made a lot more financially manageable by the complete lack of overhead. Friends, he says, have always walked up to him and stuck a ten or twenty in his pocket – and he lives in the canopy-covered bed of a small Toyota truck, this after sleeping in the woods surrounding Ashland for 13 years.

   Far from being bitter or seeing himself as a victim in his homelessness, Dolinger says, “I’m a happy guy. I have all kinds of advantages. I have no bills. All pressures are gone. I have all this time and all this space. I got into the spirit in the early 70s and never turned back.”

   And what is “the spirit?” Teetotaler Dolinger sips his mint tea. “It’s our commonality. The differences between us are incidental. They’re delusions. We’re all equally challenged, no matter how rich or poor, to get through this day and this life. Our experience is what we have in common. That raises all boats and that’s what this magazine is out to help do.”   ~





Irene Kai: Climbing the
Golden Mountain to Inner Freedom

   Irene Kai’s story seems to traverse not just nations, but centuries, starting out with a repressive, near-Medieval childhood in China, then suddenly landing in the dizzying freedoms of New York City in the sixties. She became wealthy as artist and art importer, finding, like many who attain the American Dream, that she was “miserable and exhausted.”

   That’s when life really began, with the finding of her own soul – and the mission of writing her life story, “The Golden Mountain: Beyond the American Dream.” (Silver Light Publications, Ashland, 2004, $14.95, www.silverlightpub.com).

   “I realized it was important to understand my culture but to go beyond that,” said Kai. “I didn’t have to be a Chinese girl or a mainstream American materialistic girl. I could choose what’s really important to me. That’s what America is – that freedom.”

   Kai was at the pinnacle of success as a Los Angeles art dealer, with people telling her any woman would die to be in her shoes. “If I’d made it to the top, why was I so miserable and exhausted? Why is that the American Dream?” 

   Kai left it all, divorced, moved to Ashland eight years ago and found her beloved, David Wick in a long, deeply-felt internet correspondence. She deepened her practice of meditation, which she began as a refuge from her abuse as a child in China. With this, the events and stories of four generations of women in her family flooded back to her in vivid detail, forming the basis for a story that needed to be told.

   “David would record my memories as they came in, like movies being unreeled,” said Kai. “I worked eight hours a day writing – and I cried for three years. It was incredible therapy. I was like an observer, not really feeling the pain, yet finally understanding it. My ancestors and I went through a lot of tough experiences.”

   Kai’s family has a long experience in America. Her grandfather and great-grandfather came to San Francisco in 1900 and ran a laundry, but returned to China for the son’s arranged marriage. That son and his wife came to Boston and raised a family, including Kai’s father, James. They returned to Hong Kong, where Kai’s parents had an arranged marriage and raised their children – emigrating to New York with 15-year old Kai in 1965.

   Although her parents were native-born Americans, they reverted in Hong Kong to Chinese customs, including her father having concubines and extra-marital children, while her mother, raised in America and expecting a romantic, loyal husband, stayed home raising kids and meting out severe beatings with a rod.

   Seated in her home beneath a huge, Georgia O’Keefe-style painting of a flower that she’d done, Kai read from her book.

   “Oi Ling (her Chinese name), bring me the green stick! Mother yelled from her bedroom. The green stick was the element of fear in our house…She would grab it in her hand and order us to stand still.  She’d raise it above her head and whip it with such force that we feared the whizzing sound before we felt the sting on our flesh. Afterward, welts swelled to more than a quarter inch on our legs and butts. They quickly turned black and blue at the edges and dead white in between…

   “Why are you crying? I am not even going to hit you.  You are such a stupid child!” Mother said…She was going to hit my elder sister…Most of the time we didn’t know why we got hit. She found reasons I didn’t understand. I tried to read her moods, for they could determine whether or not I would be hit.”

   Kai would escape to the rooftop and sit in a rattan chair for hours, staring at clouds and soon experiencing the clear light and universal understanding known by dedicated practitioners of meditation.

   In America, Kai learned “powerful steps to define your happiness,” as she put it.  “It’s the courage to step out. I knew as a child my life was miserable. I learned that if you get in a bad situation, you try to change it.  You have to evolve and gain experience.  Even though it’s not ultimate happiness, you’re getting closer.”

   The denouement of the story is Kai’s understanding of her mother’s torments and the moment of forgiveness at her deathbed.

   “The once almighty mother seemed so weak and small. Her gray hair reminded me of all the years that had elapsed since I had been the little girl who had tried her best to please her mother to no avail.  I was a grown woman and I was still her child.  I felt safe in her presence for the first time.

   “I took mother’s hand and held it with both of mine. I whispered in her ear, ‘Mah-me, I am here.’  I searched her face for minute movements of facial muscles that might indicate she was trying to communicate with me but her face was flat and calm…

   “A warm sensation washed over me.  It was as if her life flashed before me. I realized she had done her best.  She had been unable to love and nurture her children because she could not function as a mature woman.  She was forever that little girl who had never recovered from the devastation caused by her own mother’s abandonment…

   “She exhaled her last breath. Gone with mother was the role of the punching bag. I straightened up and breathed deeply.  I felt free and light.  The weight of my family’s judgments had lifted, gone with her forever.”

   With publication of her book, Kai’s journey had come full circle and she’d forgiven herself for being a link in the chain of abuse, released her anger and keeping the cycle from passing to her two children, she said.

   Along with climbing the inner mountain, Kai and Wick climbed the publishing mountain, attempting the world of agents and publishing companies, then, after many rejections, choosing to keep full rights and control of the book by starting their own publishing company, Silver Light.

   They had top-flight book jacket designer Nita Ybarra do the cover, got a print-on-demand printer in Michigan ($1.80 a book) and engaged Publisher’s Group West to do promotion and distribution.

   Kai speaks to online book clubs and they travel extensively, promoting the book at book fairs, bookstores and local newspapers – an expensive and exhaustive regimen, but one that leaves them in permanent control of their book and allows them to publish other titles.

   One of the big hurdles for self-publishers, she said, is credibility with the media. Even though the book has roots in San Francisco history and ethnic understanding, the newspapers there “won’t touch because it’s self-published.”

   The book is on tape, distributed by Blackstone Audiobooks of Ashland.  It was finalist for Best Cover Design with Publisher’s Marketing Assn. and for Best Book of the Year as Auto-Memoir and Mind-Body-Spirit with ForeWord Magazine.

   Noted consciousness author Jean Houston of Ashland called the book “a treasure, a beautiful and ingenious book that offers us the story of generations of women who dared to go beyond the traditional confines of their known world and to make new lives as they discovered new ways of being.”

   Next up for Silver Light is a memoir by her daughter, detailing the lonely lives of girls growing up in Los Angeles, followed by “What Do You See?” an eye-tricking, seemingly salacious photo essay created in 1973 while Kai was a student at Royal College of Art in London.

   “The Golden Mountain” is being used as a text in college-level ESL (English as a Second Language) courses in San Francisco, where emigrants from all over the world consider Kai a role model for people breaking away from the culture of their parents, she said, and redefining themselves of people assimilating into the land of liberty. 

   When she walked into such a class recently, Kai was greeted with a standing ovation and roses – “such an honor…because I’d told their story, too.”   ~






John Javna: What You Can Do
Right Now to Save the Earth

  John Javna is out trying to save the planet – again.

   When the Ashland author wrote “50 Simple Things You Can Do To Save the Earth” in 1989, it sold 5 million copies and opened a lot of minds to individual habits like recycling, a vital step, but, he says, it didn’t go far enough.

   His new book of the same title is completely rewritten to focus people on things you can do, by collaborating with others, to counteract 50 horrible crises have attacked what he calls the planet’s life support system – that is, what keeps us and everything else alive.

   This slim, easy-to-read book is not your typical file-and-forget conversation piece, but rather a doorway to global groups who are actually doing something and stand ready to be contacted by you, so you can help in their goals and tactics.

   The book got its inspiration last year when daughter Sophie Javna, 14, (inspired by Al Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth”) asked Javna why the family had stopped composting garbage. He realized the 50 simple things from the original book, while helpful, just weren’t saving the earth.

   “You can’t carry water for everyone. It can’t be just a few people doing this. The few things we do don’t make much difference,” said Javna, cracking open his first box of books from publisher Hyperion Books in New York. “A lot of people stopped there, with the clipping of plastic six-pack rings.”

   Then comedian P.J. O’Rourke needled the book on tv, calling it “the Tommy the Tank Engine of the Environmental Movement” and saying Javna had to update it or let it go.

   So, with the help of offspring Sophie and Jesse Javna, 18, he identified the 50 most egregious catastrophes of the environment, contacted the group most focused on each crisis and learned its causes and possible solutions.

   If you thought there were only five or ten ways the world was undoing itself, guess again. Some of these you haven’t even thought of, like:

--There are 46,000 pieces of plastic per square mile in the ocean, with plastic bags killing a million birds and 100,000 mammals yearly. What you can do is stop using plastic grocery bags, get your store (and city) to ban them, join Ocean Conservancy’s annual coastal cleanup, adopt a beach and clean it thrice annually and plug into Greenpeace for further tasks.

--The U.S. government invests $16 billion a year in airlines and $40 billion a year in highways but only $1.3 billion in trains, which move much larger crowds with much less environmental impact. What you can do is use trains, of course, but also join the National Association of Rail Passengers and advocate to state and federal governments for enhanced rail service.

--We’ve paved 61,000 square miles of America, so rainwater runs off instead of going in the ground like it’s supposed to. It carries gobs of pesticides with it. Runoff is the number one source of water pollution in the country, causing fish kills and toxic algae blooms. What you can do is wash your car on the lawn, compost yard waste and sweep, don’t hose, driveways.  Set up a rain barrel to save water for gardens and become an advocate, working with construction firms (a major source of runoff) to fix it. And connect with the Waterkeeper Alliance.

   Javna knows what he’s working against, a huge ballast of inertia in the human lifestyle, but he tries to do it without guilt-tripping the reader and by simplifying the topic (two pages per catastrophe), keeping the lingo friendly and hopeful.

   It’s the same formula that made a huge success of his “Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader” a series greatly expanded since he sold the rights some years ago.

   “I’m trying not to impose an overwhelming burden on readers and if I have a skill, it might be simplifying complex ideas,” says Javna, adding he hopes the material lands readers somewhere between denial and panic, feeling that, with the aid of his website, www.50simplethings.com, they can link to all the information and action portals they need.

   “The culture is going full steam in one direction and it’s not sustainable, so we have to turn it around. It’s slow and difficult, like turning an aircraft carrier around. You have to have patience, but taking substantive action brings a sense of community and hope,” he says.

   “It’s hard to create something new like this, but I felt I owed it to my daughter and son to try to do it, to create something that really works.”   ~






John Frohnmayer:
The Honorable Tradition of Dissent

Those essentials of democracy – free speech, free press, open discussion, dissent and, above all, reading – are in danger of going down the tubes in an atmosphere driven by fear, says U.S. Senate candidate John Frohnmayer

   The speech, in which Frohnmayer tried to stay shy of politics, was the keynote event of
Jackson County Reads, put on by the Jackson County Library, Jackson County Library Foundation, and Hannon Library and Westwind Review.

   In a speech at Southern Oregon University, Frohnmayer, who won notoriety as President George H.W. Bush’s director of the National Endowment for the Arts, urged about 150 people to create some new habits – promote liberal education, insist on the rule of law, protect the integrity of scientific research, stop asking for balance in news and on public bodies (when the balancing person is espousing clearly non-credible views) and support the right to dissent.

   Frohnmayer savaged the Bush administration for violating the Republican Party’s long traditions of fiscal responsibility, civil liberties and the rule of law, adding that any war should come with a declaration of war from Congress, not a blank check to wage an open-ended war against “terror.”

   “If society did it to itself, (lose free speech), would it be a violation of the First Amendment?” he asked the audience. Few could answer the question, so Frohnmayer noted, “No, it has to be a state action, telling you that you can’t or must. But if you do it to yourself, you can forget the First Amendment. It doesn’t apply.”

   Frohnmayer laid the blame for loss of freedoms at the feet of the people, noting that the traditional burst of hope, energy and creativity that starts of a century was damped by the Supreme Court deciding the 2000 election, then 9/11, the War on Terror, the War in Iraq, a big deficit, “rampant partisanship and now our economy in the toilet” – all leading the public into a mindset that “We ought to be afraid and fear is what’s keeping us immobile.”

   Frohnmayer drew laughter when he said “In the words of Sophocles, are we screwed?” He added, “I think not” but the populace has to take up the responsibilities of a democracy by learning to ask why, demanding that terms like liberal and conservative be defined, rather than used as weapons and “listen to the voices of wisdom, even if they come from those we despise.”

   The once-respected ethos of a liberal education must be brought back because it underlies some of America’s deepest values, he said, including the value that “the good life is not necessarily to be confused with the easy life,” that failure is a critical element of success and that honest interaction is vital to the social contract.

   Frohnmayer brought down the house by singing a ditty of political satire from “Spin,” his musical based on his book, “Leaving Town Alive,” soon to debut at Oregon State University, where he teaches.

   His biggest round of applause came when he faulted the Democratic Party for shying away from impeachment, when it took over Congress in 2006. The Constitution mentions impeachment six times and views it as the remedy for Constitutional crisis, which Frohnmayer said has been created by the president’s failure to “faithfully execute” the laws on many occasions.

   “We have a Constitutional crisis. We just aren’t willing to deal with it. I would impeach if it was his last day in office.”

   Frohnmayer, in an interview, called dissent “the most noble of rites” in a democracy, but in today’s political atmosphere, it’s often considered treasonous…We don’t have that kind of government where we can react. It’s a steady diet of fear fed by Bush and it disables you. If you try to change things, they say ‘be afraid’ and ‘we’ll take care of you.’”   ~






Dallas, Nov. 22, 1963 --
What If the Bullets Only Wounded Him?

  Jeff Golden’s new novel, “Unafraid” is a parallel history exploration flowing out of one tiny little change – what if those bullets aimed at JFK on Nov. 22, 1963 were a little bit off target and he was only wounded and lived out his two terms?

   Since JFK is only winged by the slugs of Nov. 22, is there a huge hoo-haw about who did it? Is there the same reluctance to upset the country by finding out the truth?  What if they come up with another much-doubted scenario that reeks of conspiracies the powerful don’t want revealed?

   Would there have been a Vietnam War?  After all, John Kennedy was smart enough not to start another land war in Asia like the one we didn’t win only a decade earlier. Would he have been able to stand up to his hawkish, dominating father and brother on that, not to mention the whole military-industrial complex?

   JFK didn’t fully “get” the Civil Rights movement, but would he soon? And where would that take Martin Luther King? Dare we say into the oven of politics?

   Would JFK, at that early date have recognized the dangers of increasing reliance on foreign oil and nudged the nation into the alternative energies we see just starting now? Or would he have continued the downward spiral of guzzling fossil fuels to keep up the profit margins of the powerful investing class? 

   And if JFK got us off Arab oil, would we still be interested in the Mideast and in Israel?  And would those planes still fly into the buildings on 9/11?

   What about all his women? Would the press stop ignoring his foibles and start doing exposes on him, destroying his presidency?  J. Edgar Hoover had all the files and pictures on this. Would JFK find some way to get rid of this blackmailer?

   Nixon would run in 1968, but would Bobby Kennedy?  Would he have grown into the idealistic visionary we knew in real life? Would there still be an assassin waiting for him in that Los Angeles hotel?  Would it be the same assassin?

   Such alternative history plots are fascinating and Golden juggles them artfully in his 347-page romp which takes place in the present day, as JFK daughter Caroline Kennedy moves about in her bejiggered world, opening up the New York Times to Sept. 11, 2001, then, in the next chapter, to Sept. 12. What are the headlines?  You practically have to leap around in the book to take the wrappers off the little candies it contains.

   We’re able to leap into the past because Caroline is editing the history of JFK, and his impact on America over the ensuing 40 years, written for the Kennedy Center by a sharp, tough woman who won’t stand for a whitewash.

   Golden has some nibbles on the book from publishing companies, but they dinged the book because it mixes novel with lots of political philosophy, which comes as no surprise to those who’ve read Golden’s columns, earlier books and seen his interview shows.

   Golden is a shameless hope fiend and the subtitle of the book shows it – “A Novel of the Possible.”  That’s pure Golden.  In this toughest of times for liberal-progressives, Golden, in an interview, asks that we “overcome the political obstacles and create a different world, arriving (in his book) at a world that’s better than the one we live in.

   But he’s not going to make it treacly and nice – and he lets his sharply-drawn characters (real life personages) be the nasty and sometimes nice people they are in the history books.  He also lets them talk at extreme length, so there’s often many pages of dialog with the author (the fictional one in the book) not doing enough trimming, guiding and explaining.

   Which begs the question, why the book-within-a-book? Why not just skip the long didactic expositions of all the misguided policies of the world JFK walked into and the oh-so-sensible enlightened policies that would come from an increasingly wiser and much beloved (because he got shot and lived) JFK. Why not write a nice, juicy novel that stays in the hands of author and leads us to love the heros (and forgive them their juicy, much-detailed sins) and hate the scheming villains who want to block this ideal world?

   But, dang, Golden has much in him of someone who writes those dry political platform statements and white papers. He would do well to shake it and write foremost, not for future candidates, but for the reader, who longs for a good read based on these gripping ideas.

   Golden put out initial copies with a publish-on-demand house, iUniverse and is promoting the book to prove its appeal, while still looking for a “real” publisher, so this book can actually be considered a draft, a good one. 

   It’s also clearly a love letter to the lost prince of a generation, although Golden complains that JFK was far too romanticized after his death. Still, like so many in his generation (he was 13 on Nov. 22, 1963), Golden knew precisely where he was when he got the soul-shattering news. And, like most pundits, Golden thinks it skewed history and the American Dream bigtime.

   So, why not a history of the way things actually would have been? Here it is.

   “That single moment that day in Dallas caused such a radical pivot in the attitude of this country. He generated that pride about the country and the believe in self that is separate from his record of accomplishments,” muses Golden. “His murder was something a lot bigger that him dying that day.”   ~








Les & Gordon: Gay and Gray

   It’s hard enough being gay in your young years, but with aging, some new problems arise. They’re a lot like the old problems – stemming mostly from homophobia.

   For Ashland partners Les Krambeal and Gordon Owsley, the fears are about frailty in advanced age where one or both might end up in an assisted living facility or nursing home, likely staffed by a typical cross section of population, that is, with its share of homophobia..

   “A very real concern is being discriminated against by neglect until you die-- or outright killing you by withholding meds,” said Krambeal, a paralegal and treasurer of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Political Caucus of Southern Oregon.

   “There’s enough elder abuse out there too, and it’s worse if you’re gay,” said Owsley, president of the LGBT.

   Other homosexuals differed with this assessment. Dick Warren, 74, said he’s warmly accepted at Rogue Valley Manor senior community, but that he also learned to “pass” (present a seemingly heterosexual lifestyle) early in life and “it’s no different now.”

   “Most people here know my story,” said Warren, an art historian. “I’m totally accepted and would be very surprised if any discrimination happened here. I find it hard to believe any nursing home people would be prejudiced.”

   Kate Geary, a bed-and-breakfast owner in Ashland, said, “That discrimination might be an issue, but I think it’s more anxiety-based. However, a whole lot of people are disturbed by fears from how they’ve been treated in the medical field. I’ve heard about outright prejudice of doctors who don’t feel comfortable even discussing anything about lesbian-gay issues.”

   Krambeal and Owsley said two friends of theirs, a lesbian couple, recently settled a suit against a Rogue Valley hospital after nurses refused to bathe one of them, a patient recovering from a car accident. Secrecy was a condition of the settlement, they noted.

   All said Ashland was a much safer place than surrounding communities for gay-lesbian people of any age. However, all agreed it was not tolerant enough for public hand-holding or dancing (though lesbians are more free to dance together than gays), as is seen in more liberal cities, such as Palm Springs, San Francisco or Tucson.

   “It’s not fun hiding your affections,” said Krambeal, noting that he and Owsley are moving soon to Tucson. Both grew up in Southern Oregon but said they don’t want to grow old in a region where people drive by their home and yell “faggot” or, as happened when they strolled to the Daedalus performance (to raise AIDS funds), pickets shouted “hellbound” at them.

   Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is illegal in Ashland, but the state legislature has been unable to pass such a law since it first came up in 1973, said Madeline Hill, president of Mountain Meadows senior community in Ashland. No federal law bars such discrimination, either.

   “Everyone’s welcome here,” she said of Mountain Meadows, “and I’ve never asked anyone about their sexual orientation – nor would I ever,” she said.

   In Medford, Fountain Plaza, Horton Plaza and Anna Maria Creekside all would welcome any homosexual individual or couple, although not required to do so by state or federal law, said manager Kari Floeck of Horton. All three retirement homes are under common ownership.

   “We would never discriminate against anyone, for any reason, except you have to be at least 55 to live here,” she said.

   A 66-year old gay Ashland man, who asked not to be named, said he and his partner of 22 years feel they’ve largely handled any imaginable problem by getting extensive long-term care insurance that would cover car in their home – which is stepless and on one floor.

   They’re also affirming their lifelong support and caretaking with each other by getting legally married in Canada on New Year’s Day, followed by a non-legal “blessing of same-sex union” at their Episcopal Church locally.

   The larger problem for gay-lesbians, he noted, is not any dubious care in senior facilities but the issue of caring and support from members of their family of origin.

   “My adult children have wanted nothing to do with me since the day I came out in 1970, mainly due to their mother poisoning them against me,” he said. “I’ve seen them but the cold shoulder treatment was too painful and I’ve signed off. I was allowed to see my grandchildren but was introduced as an old friend of grandma’s.”

   Krambeal, Owsley and Geary all reported warm support from their adult children, although fathers of gays seem to have the hardest time accepting it, said Krambeal. Warren said he only “came out” as gay after both parents were dead.

   A problem can arise over property when one gay or lesbian partner dies, said Krambeal. Blood family members often feel free to come and pick up the deceased’s belongings, as if the bereaved partner, not being a legal spouse, had no claim to them.

   Prejudice against homosexuals does not stop at death. Surviving homosexuals have been barred by family members from attending the partner’s funeral and they are banned from being buried next to each other in veteran cemeteries, Krambeal said.  They are still barred, nationwide, from making a contract giving them the same rights as married couples in hospital visitation, taxes and inheritance, said Krambeal.

   The Oregon Supreme Court has ruled that all work benefits must apply to same-sex partners, as they would to married partners, making it “very progressive” among states for gay rights, Krambeal said. All anti-gay ballot measures here have been defeated, but only because of left-leaning Portland, Eugene and Ashland, he added, with Jackson County consistently in favor.
  
   “A lot of people out there still hate us,” said Krambeal.

   “That’s why we want to retire in a big city,” said Owsley. “We’re tired of the lily-white Rouge Valley. We want to be surrounded by the whole mix – blacks, Hispanics, gays, everyone living together and getting along.”

   “After all,” said Krambeal, “we’re exactly like everyone else – except we’re not.”   ~







Linda Biehl: The Path of Restorative Justice 

After her daughter Amy was killed by four young black, anti-apartheid militants in South Africa, Linda Biehl could have walked away and tended to her own grief and anger.  But the world – and Amy’s spirit -- wouldn’t let her.

   Not just sympathy poured in, but money, enough to start the Amy Biehl Foundation, which spends millions of dollars on jobs, cultural activities, AIDS prevention and other community- and person-building programs in South Africa, Linda Biehl told the Ashland Rotary yesterday.

   Although Linda and her late husband Peter faced a huge journey of forgiveness, Linda Biehl stressed that her consuming work since Amy’s 1993 murder has not been in forgiveness, but in the personal and political mission of reconciliation and restorative justice.

   “When you forgive, that’s good, but you can also walk away and live your own life,” said Linda Biehl. “What I learned about restorative justice is that people have to be restored to the community. It’s about work, not sitting around. It doesn’t mean you have to love everyone, but you’re engaged in positive ways, working with people, respecting them, listening to them and helping them reap the benefits everyone needs.”

   A good example of restorative justice, she added, would be, instead of just thanking and paying your domestic worker year after year, go see where she lives and learn about her life and get involved in it.

   “It’s called ubuntu, which means ‘I am -- because you are here,’ in other words, no man is an island. We’re in touch with each other’s humanity and, as the Rotarians say, service above self.” This philosophy was the foundation for rebuilding South Africa under Nelson Mandela, she said.

   When people convicted of crimes under the apartheid regime appealed to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for pardons, the Biehls did not ask punishment of the four men convicted of their daughter’s murder, but said they would support the TRC’s pardon, if it was found the act was political and not criminal.

   Today, two of the pardoned men work with Beihl and go on speaking tours all over the world, splitting honoraria three ways, she said, joking about how they’d all become close friends and how the well-fed pair have put on weight – and how she loaned them money to buy their homes in South Africa.

   “They now have goals, education and are married fathers of daughters who go to multi-racial schools.”

   The Amy Biehl Foundation over the past eight years has spent $3 million and provided 150 jobs in South Africa in support of programs for drama, arts, recreation, sports, work in prisons, a golf driving range, Amy Biehl High School and many other programs – all with an eye to providing jobs and income to help mend a society torn apart by decades of revolt against apartheid.

   Said Rotarian Deedie Runkel, a sponsor of the Biehl visit, “What I got (from hearing Biehl’s story) is the power of one person’s commitment. It’s like the old saying – world peace will come through the will of ordinary people like myself.”

   Funded by a Fulbright Scholarship to write a thesis on “The Transformation of Women in an Emerging Democracy,” Amy Biehl fully knew the danger she was in as a white person in the final months of apartheid, said her mother, and Amy thoroughly explained her commitment to helping save young people and bring free elections.

   Amy, then 26, was dragged from her car by rock-throwing black rebels and stabbed to death, an event Beihl painfully recounted – the phone call from South Africa, the shock and grief, the feeling of not being able to believe it and “how could this happen to us?”

   The Biehls for years received thousands of calls and faxes, showering them with funds and urging they set up programs to help themselves and South African society heal. In South Africa, the Biehls met and shook hands with the perpetrators and learned how they saw themselves – as freedom fighters, living in poverty and oppression.

   “They came forward and said they wanted to start youth groups. It was kind of amazing, the courage they had,” said Linda Biehl. “They took on Amy’s spirit and opened up to her work and vision. They told me they wouldn’t have killed Amy if they knew she was dedicated to their cause. They saw her as just another white oppressor and that’s what they were killing.”

   The Biehls face struggles, still getting racially-based hate mail after 12 years – and seeing two of the four killers, trained in violence, guns and robbery, return to jail.

   “But a lot of people loved Amy. It shouldn’t have happened. We rallied around Amy. This is how we show our love for her – and our support for freedom in South Africa. The one great joy of this is what Amy connected us to, that we all have humanity.”   ~






Bill Ashworth: Can We Run Out of Water?

   Growing up in the Pullman-Snake River area, Bill Ashworth developed a profound respect for nature and, in Ashland over the last 25 years – off-hours from his job as the town’s reference librarian -- has bent his considerable literary talents to writing 12 books on the environment, including in 1986, the award-winning “The Late Great Lakes.”

   Ashworth, 61, retired last year from his day job to devote his creative energies to his other love, music and has just had his “Silver Apples of the Moon,” a chamber piece featuring the words of Yeats sung by soprano, performed at Ashland Unitarian-Universalist Church.

   His environmental-naturalist books have covered the Wallowas, Hell’s Canyon, the rodent population explosion in Klamath County (caused by coyote extermination in 1947) and pork-barrel politics, which he learned as a Sierra Club lobbyist in Washington, D.C., trying to stop the Applegate Dam.

   His “Left Hand of Eden – Meditations on Nature and Human Nature,” an Oregon Book Award winner in 1999, spelled out his decision to resign his three decades-long membership in the Sierra Club – an indictment of the group for “creating a false dichotomy by treating nature as ‘other’.”

   He branded as “purist, strident and ideological,” the Club’s decision to oppose logging on any federal land, pointing out that sweeping actions like the Wilderness Act of 1964 greatly accelerated forest roadbuilding by timber interests before it took effect.

   “I saw it hiking on the Rogue-Umpqua Divide in 1969. It was all roadless on a four year old topo map. But when I was there it was all roaded at intervals that would preclude it from being in any wilderness area. The Act probably destroyed more wilderness than it saved.”

   His 13th book, now in the works, details the impending ecological upheaval as we drain water from the huge six-state Ogalalla aquifer of the Great Plains, to feed large-scale mechanized, corporate farming.

   After writing “Nor Any Drop to Drink,” an exploration of the world’s diminishing water resources, Ashworth last year began extending the theme with “Ogalalla Blue.” The book-in-progress charges we’re not just polluting our resources at alarming rates -- we’re using them up, especially water, all over the planet.

   “Lots of people know, but you can’t convince the general population,” Ashworth said. “We basically in deep denial. In parts of the Ogalalla, the largest aquifer in the world, the water has already stopped flowing. It’s at critical levels in the Texas panhandle region and the recharge it used to get from Rocky Mtn. snowmelt has been largely cut off by erosion.”

   As a Quaker all his adult life, Ashworth’s activism is grounded in pacifism. His weapons are not the sit-in nor the raised voice but knowledge, all gained by his voracious knack for long hours of research.

   Ashworth unabashedly claims credit for creation of the 16,000-acre Red Buttes Wilderness on the Oregon-California border. He was chairman of the drive to get it through Congress and instrumental in creation of the Hell’s Canyon Wilderness, as well.

   “He’s been almost a local John Muir,” said longtime friend, investor Bryan Frink of Ashland. “He’s had a great impact in his writing and activism and brought a feeling of joy to the wilderness, by his example that you ought to participate in it and not just observe it. He is un-awed by authority or celebrity, as seen in his stand against the dogmatism of the Sierra Club’s zero logging policy.”

   Ashworth was headed for a career in music or musicology (writing about music) during his years at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash. and his master’s degree at University of Washington. With his new wife, Melody, Ashworth went on to doctoral studies at University of Oregon, where poverty and parenthood spurred him to a career of freelance magazine writing.

   With his first sale to a music magazine, the light bulb went on and Ashworth saw he could combine writing and the then-ballooning fields of environmental activism and war protest.  He quickly learned that a writer’s income, such as it was, would come more from books, so in 1977-78 he penned a pair, “The Wallowas; Coming of Age in the Wilderness” and “Hell’s Canyon – Deepest Gorge in the World.”

   Both were in the naturalist tradition of Thoreau, Muir and Edward Abbey, intertwining natural history, adventure and personal reflection on the beauty of nature but denying himself flights of reverie in favor of a “just the facts” narrative.

   An excerpt from “The Wallowas” reads:
   “A fire had been built, food has been cooked and eaten and now the fire is dying. We huddle close to it in the cooling August evening, talking of many things – of the steep trail up from Lostine, of the way we will go tomorrow (up that talus slope through that notch and we hope, onto the summit of Elkhorn Peak, two miles to the south of us), and of the vast difference between the conglomeration of bodies down at the trailhead and the total solitude we are enjoying here on the mountain.  Of all things I have noticed in the wilderness, this is perhaps the hardest to understand; Why do people insist on remaining so close to their cars as if they were tied to them by some unseverable umbilicus? And yet on the trail, even at its beginning, it had been utterly deserted.  Squirrels had scolded from the branches, birds, hidden in the trailside bushes, had spun about us magnificent and captivating webs of song; a bear, startled at our approach, had crashed off across the hillside like a trackless express train. But there had been no people…And now, here at the lake, beside the fire, the night is silent.”

   His book, “Under the Influence; Congress, Lobbies and the American Pork Barrel System” in 1981 charged that the fate of America’s water is controlled by the incestuous ties between politicians and special interests in their home districts. The work came out of his unsuccessful lobbying efforts, under the Sierra Club aegis, to stop the Applegate Dam -- “like trying to knock over an elephant with a pea shooter,” he said.

   Raising two daughters and, later, two foster daughters, including a Moroccan girl who became part of the family, Ashworth took on his library job in 1985 and wrote off-hours, completing a massive reference tome, “The Encyclopedia of Environmental Studies” in 1991, which he describes as exhaustive of both subject and author – “six years of torture” to write.

   His best-seller, “The Late Great Lakes,” (Knopf, 1986) detailed the “precipitous and devastating” decline of America’s longest coastline and repository of a fifth of the world’s fresh water. Ashworth traveled the region, putting the spotlight on logged-off forests, the wiping out of beaver, salmon, trout and whitefish – to be replaced by predatory lamprey eels, alewives and smelt, all made possible by man-made canals.

   Asked to update the book in 2000, the Ashworths made another personal inspection, called “Great Lakes Journey,” a project aided by wife Melody’s education and career as medical lab director at Southern Oregon University’s student health center.

   Despite a lifelong love of nature, Ashworth felt compelled, in “The Economics of Nature,” (1995) to tell the environmental community that “the economists have a point” and money is not the bad guy in the struggle for a livable environment.

   The market system works, he said, and if environmentalists try to understand it, they’ll find out that what damages the environment eventually damages the market. The money interests need to understand that “externalization” (putting environmental costs out to the public) doesn’t work, he added, because it means the public will end up paying for the damage 100 times over, thus reducing real wealth of all in the long run.

   Though he’s not become famous (or rich) at it, Ashworth has “definitely done his research and made a big impact, a lasting one,” said fellow reference librarian Amy Blossom. “He’s done it by avoiding being an extremist and always trying to bring both sides together.”

   In his lifelong research, Ashworth has tried to overcome one frailty of human nature, the failure to understand that, as the first environmental author Rachael Carson said, “we are dealing with life here” and that always introduces unpredictable variables.

   Referring to his “The Carson Factor,” (1979), Ashworth said farmers wiped out coyotes, opening the gates for a rodent population explosion in Klamath County because, “They were operating on the bio-equivalent of the flat-earth theory. They ignored the reality that they we’re dealing with life. When you do that, all progress is false and leads to unforeseen results that can come back to haunt us with disastrous results.”

   Asked if he predicted a major breakdown of any environmental system in the present generation, Ashworth responded, “Yes, a number of systems, mainly global warming and running out of water, with a gradual decline in total agricultural production.”

   Global warming, he said, will have “drastic effects” in the near term, with inundation of “huge areas” in Florida due to ocean rise of two to four feet. “It’s not just the temperature rise. It’s the increase in energy introduced into the atmosphere, causing much worse storms and tornados. It’s already happening. We can’t live at this population density and sustain our lifestyle. One or both has to give.”   ~






Thousands of War Flags Covering the Lawn

  “Overwhelming,” is the word most often used to describe the sight – a shimmering carpet of tiny flags spread over the big lawns of Southern Oregon University, each one representing six people killed in the Iraq War. 

   There will be no speeches, candles or picket signs during the week of the display, just the silent image of the human cost of this war – and the emotional impact taking place in the people who look at it.

    “I cried when I drove by. I knew what the flags were, without anyone telling me,” said Susan Bizeau. “Now that I’m standing here, learning the numbers, it’s sickening.”

   The numbers, explain volunteers operating an informational booth are 3,974 American dead (now past 4,050), and 655,000 Iraqi dead. The dead Americans are represented by red flags sprinkled among the white ones at a ratio of 1-to-150.

   “It’s really sad to see all these flags,” said Kane Pappa, 13, of Talent. It gives me a picture in my mind of all the families that are here.”

   “It’s pretty overwhelming. I’m not unfamiliar with the numbers but it’s pretty graphic when you see and realize that every one of these flags has five more bodies not shown. It kind of leaves you speechless,” said Liberty McGeo, who was shooting a video on the project.

   Jim Mau of Ashland, a combat veteran of the Vietnam War, said he came to the display to “connect with the read flags,” but was leaving with two questions, “Would there be this many white flags without the red flags – and would these white flags even be here without the red flags?”

   “It’s for you to answer,” he added.

   The display started in Colorado, became a nonprofit organization and has planted the flags at University of Oregon, Portland State University, Lewis and Clark College and other schools in the West.  It’s sponsored here by Peace House, the Friends Meeting (Quakers) and SOU’s Students for Truth.

   Sunday strollers would amble by the display, which was framed with cherry blossoms and stretched half a mile, from one end of the campus to the other. They would stop to contemplate, chat – and were invited to discuss their feelings, pro or con, with booth volunteers who’ve been trained in compassionate listening, said Pam Vavra, chairwoman of Peace House.

   “Mostly it’s mourning and grieving, as well as a lot of gratitude for increasing our awareness of the sheer number of the casualties,” said Vavra. “One woman said ‘why do you want to bring this up?’ A few arrived irate but left with understanding after talking to others about it.”

   While the American body count is exact, Vavra said estimates of the Iraqi dead range from 400,000 to 1.2 million. Most of the Iraq dead are civilians, she added, and they’re all from military action.

   “Our weapons are pretty effective,” she said, in explaining the disparity of the two body counts.

   Asked if it were different to see the flags, rather than just read a set of numbers in the newspaper, Selma Moss of Ashland said, “You’d better believe it. It’s very visual to see how many lives were lost and we shouldn’t even be there.”

   David Wick of Ashland noted, “This is important to do. We’re so isolated and insulated from the reality of this.”

   “It’s a very effective means of bringing the enormity of these dead to the public eye,” said Sidney Abrahams.

   Added his wife Rhoda Abrahams, “I read about it but had no concept of what it’s like. It really blows your mind.”

   The organization hopes to buy enough flags (at $58 per thousand) to represent every death and is asking donations at www.IraqBodyCountExhibit.org. Its 124,000 flags fill 30 cardboard boxes, weighing about 300 pounds and took 40 local volunteers 8 hours to install.

   Volunteer Suzanne Marshall of the Peace House board said one Iraq War veteran asked why they’d put up flags for the Iraqis. She added that it has quite a physical and visual impact for veterans but “almost everyone has been positive about it.”   ~






Bill Clinton: Stumping for Hillary

Undaunted by delegate counts that seem to show his wife’s candidacy as a long shot, former President Bill Clinton continued to campaign through Southern Oregon, saying Sen. Hillary Clinton would spark the economy to life with a focus on environmental jobs, energy-wise vehicles and the capturing of abundant wind energy in eastern Oregon.

   Wearing a dazzling magenta tie and speaking to a friendly crowd of about 800 at Rogue Community College, a tired-looking Clinton raised guffaws when he confessed he agreed with his daughter Chelsea -- that his wife would make a better president that himself because at this moment in history, “we need a change-maker in there.”

   After exhausting a complex array of policy issues which his wife has worked and voted for, Clinton appealed to political pragmatism, citing favorable polls and saying, “There are only two questions left, who will be the best president and who will be able to beat Senator McCain in November?”

   Clinton showed a command of regional issues, warning that the Bush Energy Bill had “stripped Oregon” of its right to decide if and where it will site Liquid Natural Gas lines and laying the blame for termination of county timber payments on Bush, who “broke a 100-year old promise” to compensate counties for lost taxes on timber lands. His wife, he added, is working to reverse those policies.

   The crowd in the sunny outdoor Rogue Bowl shouted one-word prompts to Clinton, who would acknowledge them and, to their delight, take off in the suggested direction.

   When cued on the Iraq War and the fate of veterans, the two-term president said Sen. Clinton’s vote for the war legislation was conditioned on the bill’s language that inspections for weapons of mass destruction must be completed before any hostilities.

   Several thousand veterans have come home with “brains rattled” from roadside bombs and no one knows when and how they will get back to normal, said Clinton, adding that vets should get full lifetime medical coverage, so we won’t repeat what happened after Vietnam and “have 200,000 people sleeping under bridges and in cardboard boxes – it’s a national disgrace.”

   Loud hoots of approval greeted Clinton’s condemnation of Bush’s signature education act – No Child Left Behind. “It doesn’t work. It helps only 5 percent of schools that are the most dysfunctional,” he said.

   Clinton denounced several economic factors crushing the middle class – rising gasoline prices, college tuition, the home mortgage crisis and medical and insurance prices, saying that his wife would find $30 billion to allow homeowners to stay put if they’ve honestly tried to keep up payments.

   He savaged the health insurance industry, saying they spend $50 billion a year “trying not to insure you” by searching your health history for pre-existing conditions, claiming deductibles and finding flaws in your paperwork.

   He called huge, high-interest college loans “crazy” and said his wife would tell them, “stay where you are (in college), your country needs you” and move the government toward higher Pell grants and other funding for students.

   Drawing the most applause were Clinton’s ideas to run the country like a community college, with everyone having a seat at the table and implementing good ideas – especially around the environment – that improve life.

   “The best way to create jobs is to save the planet,” said Clinton. He suggested repealing subsidies to oil companies, creating a $50 billion energy fund and bringing in more solar, wind and biomass energy, along with a car battery that can generate enough juice to give a hybrid over 100 mpg on the highway.

   Reaction to Clinton’s speech was uniformly positive, with some saying he changed their minds and others noting they would stick with Democratic frontrunner Barack Obama.

   Organic gardener Rosy Killian said she’s “absolutely with Hillary, without a doubt” because of her plans for economic revival and medical coverage. Asked about widespread calls for Sen. Clinton to quit the race, she said, “Come on! She gets more inspiring every day. She’s the strongest and I want to vote for a woman.”

   Penny Shipley of Hugo said the ex-president’s story of the Bush Energy Bill swayed her most and she will vote for Sen. Clinton “because this is my opportunity to vote for a woman and she is still viable. Her campaign is weak but you never know in this country.”

   Nancy Hitchcock of Grants Pass said, “She’s absolutely wonderful. We have to make some big changes and I’m glad he went into such detail about environmental issues. It gives me hope.”

   RCC counselor Pam Howard said she’s admires Clinton’s work on timber payments but  will vote Obama “because of the inclusiveness he brings to the nation. People feel more part of it.”

   Roger Jackson of Grants Pass also said he was impressed by the ex-president’s charisma but would vote Obama because this is a time when people distrust the government and “he seems to be a straight shooter and she’s lied a couple times, so she seems like politics as usual.”

   Said Leota Love of Grants Pass, “He’s magnificent and she’s even better. Absolutely, I’m going to vote for her. We need her bad. The country is in terrible shape and we need her to clean it up.”

   Retired Grants Pass teacher Judy Allen said No Child Left Behind “has been disastrous to our children” and she supports Clinton because “she’s not willing to give up. She’s very strong, not a quitter.”

   Clinton has stumped many medium-size towns in the region. He campaigned in Roseburg before his Grants Pass stop and went onto a speech at Klamath Community College in Klamath Falls Tuesday afternoon.   ~





Barack Obama:
I Don’t Take Myself Too Seriously

  History seems to move by inches, building up its energy behind some invisible dam, then moves by larger leaps and suddenly we find ourselves with three finalists for the next presidency – and (who’d have believed it, only a decade ago?) only one is from that group of white males we’ve gotten to choose from for the last several centuries.

   And even though we thought Oregon – though it invented the primary election 98 years ago – wouldn’t have much of a voice in the selection, now it seems we will and the choice in our May primary is between a woman and an African-American.  But, as so many people have commented, we don’t care what gender or ethnicity (or party) they happen to have.  What we really care about (sounds dopey, but we mean it) is finding someone with the vision and humanity to help unite us in a common purpose.  We want someone to help focus us on what really matters to most of us as we search for ways to stabilize an economy that can work for and is fair to everyone.

   It’s a palpable hunger among the electorate to drop the divisive stuff and return to a sensible vision.  This hunger shows itself in masses of people standing for hours in a line labeled “people without tickets” waiting to see Barack Obama at a modest-sized gym in Medford’s poorest neighborhood, where scalpers are asking (and getting) real money to get inside and see him, as if he were a rock star. 

   He’s only in his 40s and has only been in Washington a couple of years but they’re standing and shouting, even swooning for him, scrambling to touch him, shake his hand and, if the Secret Service will let them, hug him.  It’s electric when he enters the arena and I tell a fellow reporter, y’know, in four decades of journalism, I’ve never heard of people paying to see a politician.  Really, what is happening here?

   When he talks, well, it’s disarming.  He’s talking about real issues that matter to people, mainly around the outrages of escalating college, housing and medical costs and the incalculable disasters happening now to our planet.  He doesn’t bait people with sure applause lines but outlines goals and says what most people think – why are we arguing about gay marriage when the nation’s wealth and blood is being consumed in a “dumb war” and the most real and important threat we face is climate change?

   Again, to underline it, this is not about parties.  It’s about anxiety.  Fear.  A longing for the country to get on the right track and actually function well for everyone.  For a generation, we’ve been told greed is good and will make a great nation of winners.  But, finally, with the subprime crash, it’s clear that greed is not good, not even for the investor class – and now we’re more scared about the economy than we’ve ever been about Islamic terrorists. 

   And here’s a guy coming to a scruffy gym in Medford, Oregon, with latecomers paying major money to hear him, saying something I’ve not heard since Bobby Kennedy ran here in 1968, that the people have the wisdom, as corny as that may sound – and it’s not what we’ve been practicing for this past generation.

   Listening to this African-American man with the very African-sounding name, it’s eerie how much he sounds like RFK – the gentle, abashed humor, the roots in an outcast ethnic group, the love of his children, the mark of suffering on him, the weighing of his words to get at what’s not just popular, but true.

   The killing of Bobby (let’s not even mention his brother) was like Nation, Interrupted – and we just woke up the next day, numbed, and went about our business and said well, maybe things will work out, but they didn’t.  And though they’re all politicians and will say what it takes to gain power, you have the sense this guy, like Bobby, is saying things that need to be said, even if they would get most politicians run out of office.

   I sensed his best comment would come in the Town Hall segment, where anyone can ask a question – and finally, here it is, something about: how do you do this, how do you take the pressure and he said, I don’t take myself too seriously. I take the work seriously and if you feel it’s about you, you’re missing it. I’ll make mistakes, he says, and learn from them and I’ll have to dig deep and refocus, he says. How many politicians say that?  Few. None.

   As a nation, say the polls, two-thirds of us think the country is on the wrong track and the war was a mistake.  I haven’t felt anything like this since the dissension and divisions of the twin tragedies of Vietnam and Watergate, but back then, there was such passion, you knew it would take us somewhere positive.  Now, the longing for fundamental change (not to over-use the favorite Obama word) is real.  It’s like, hey, we, the people, together, have the wisdom and a huge majority of us want a nation that works for peace, heroically counters the destruction of nature and provides the basics that the profit-motivated private sector had promised it would take care of but didn’t. We don’t care who does it, but it’s become clear no one at the top is going to take care of us – and we have to find leaders who will actually represent the good will, common sense and longing for a functioning society that we all have.

   After it’s over, I shake his hand, as I did with John and Bobby Kennedy. It’s a kind of completing of the circle, isn’t it?  I wedge in and stand on a chair to reach him.  Obama is laughing and seeming kind of shy, no bravado, letting the human wave sweep over him.  I find myself involuntarily thinking, it’s too good, too simple, isn’t it?  He’s too nice and he’s making too much sense, just speaking the will of the average middle class person tired of reading about (and experiencing) all the miseries, so close to home now.  As he moves down the line, I put white light around him, for protection, something I’ve always done with my children and other people I care about.  ~