Healthcare

Lunch time, so I’m going to take advantage of WiFi and post.

Hillary Clinton Promises Universal Healthcare

This is an issue I’ve thought a lot about over the years. As a “fringe person” (the bizarre fringes, but who’s labelling?), I’ve had very few encounters with healthcare in America.

Cut for TMI and rantiness

My first encounter was pregnancy, and the baby was born 4 1/2 months premature (she survived and is doing well). Her twin was an invasive cancer. (as an aside – all pregnancies are a form of cancer, it’s just that some of them develop into viable beings) The doctor for the pregnancy was outstanding (he’s now in research because he can’t afford malpractice insurance as an OB-GYN), the insurance company was not. We were left, after insurance paid their share, with more than $1,000,000.00 in medical bills.

Yep, that’s right – after insurance paid their share.

The doctor thought he’d gotten all the cancer from the twin out, but it metastasized to several other places, cropping up virulently a year later. A year and a half of intensive chemo, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy later, it was in remission, leaving us with half a million in debt, added to the previous million.

The gods weren’t through with us yet, though, and I became pregnant agin – startling the medical community. He was also born 4 1/2 months early, another million dollar baby (he’s doing well and serving in the military).

In each instance, the insurance company refused to pay for many procedures and necessary tests – lack of which delayed needed treatments which contributed to the prematurity of the babies. The insurance refused to pay for much of the necessary support for the babies because they were so premature. Their attitude was that these babies were “unsalvageable” and therefore not to be treated. After 2 weeks in intensive care, I took each baby home and cared for them myself. Both babies are now adults, with college educations. One works in IT for the Health Department and the other is a soldier on deployment.

The insurance company thought these two people were not worth saving.

And therein lies my concern for a universal health care system. How many more babies like these two will be deemed “not worth saving” – and not have the advantage of a fringey mother who knows a lot of phytotherapy and magic to keep them alive and well without any professional medical support at all?

I’ve only used the traditional healthcare system to get tests run that I felt were needed. Occasionally, I’ve used them for diagnostic purposes. But I have never again used the medical system for treatment of anything for me and mine – precisely because insurance doesn’t allow us to do what is in our best interests health-wise.

I fear, very much, that auniversal health care system, at least all the ones that have been promoted so far, will be as detrimental to our overall health, or worse, than health insurance has proven to be.

I wrote an article almost 10 years ago (might have been a bit longer than that, time flies when you’re having fun) about how the average uninsured Pagan and itinerant Rennie merchant could have good health care with little or no health insurance – and I didn’t recommend learning herbal therapies or reiki or anything else of that nature.

I’ve somewhat modified my views since then with new information that has become available but the bulk of whatI wrote then holds true still.

I’ll share with you the type of healthcare system I think might be a viable on in American culture.

One is to take the taxes we currently pay for Medicaid and Medicare and use it for “level one” health care: primarily preventive care in the form of routine vision screening, basic dental care, immunizations, common ailment care provided at out-patient clinics that can be easily handled by RNs and interns (colds, flu, minor injuries like simple fractures, cuts, and other small emergencies that are not life-threatening but still require medical attention), birth control, chronic illnes care that is not in crises (like hypertension, diabetes, seizure disorders, thyroid disorders, allergies, and such needing monitoring and refill of medication), pain mangement of chronic illnesses, screenings for illnesses of various sorts (based on family history and need), basic pregnancy and childbirth, and preventive health education which includes free classes on nutrition, CPR, dental care, vision care, cold and flu prevention, exercise programs, health cost management, etc. All of this would be routine, handled by trained personnel but not necessarily MDs and specialist MDs. All would be paid for by our tax dollars and it would be available to everyone in America – including tourists and visitors from other countries.

It would also pay for “level two” care – crises situations, immediate, life-threatening injuries and illnesses until the patient is stable.

Level one and level two care are funded by tax dollars, but that still leaves a vast portion of health care uncovered – the high risk pregnancy, the lengthy illnesses that are not chronic, like cancer care, surgeries for conditions that are not immediately life-threatening, physical therapy and supportive after care for critical care patients – all of the healthcare that insurance companies term “major medical”. This level of care is where something resembling health insurance steps in. That nasty “pre-existing condition” clause has to go because most of these conditions would be found during the “level one” care, or would be the wind up of “level two” care – every condition treated here would fall under “pre-existing”. Because not everyone will need this type of care, I see no reason why it should be entirely tax-supported. It can be paid for through private insurance, as the bulk of our healthcare currently is, or we can seek viable alternatives.

Our tax dollars should provide major medical care for all children up until they leave school (whether that’s high school or college), for all senior citizens over the age of 70 (may treat younger if the adult in question is incapacitated by age-related conditions, such as Alzheimer’s – and older if the senior opts out of the care, but the senior can choose to take advantage of it at anytime after age 70), and for the disabled.

One such alternative I propose is the Health Trust Accounts. It’s sort of like the Health Savings accounts – vaguely, anyway.

Let me tell you how I envision a Health Trust Account working: Each person receives a Health Trust Account at birth, with our tax dollars providing the seed money for it and a nominal sum paid into it each year ($100, $200, something like that). The parents can put as much or as little money into it as they want or can afford, and their employers will put in an amount to match the tax dollar amount. Because children have all of their healthcare (except elective cosmetic surgery like rhinoplasty with no underlying medical condition or breast enlargement) paid for by tax dollars, they won’t be touching the money in these accounts until they are full adults and will have a large fund to pay for major medical costs. As adults, they can continue to deposit money into these Health Trust funds, and their employers, instead of paying for health insurance, can deposit that amount in the Health Trust Fund of their employees. Basic and life-threatening health care is still tax-dollar funded, but now the adults are in control of how and where their health dollars are spent for major medical care and they can work in pertnership with their doctor for their medical care. The doctor can charge reasonable and fair fees instead of the grossly inflated fees they must charge in order to recoup a fair amount.

Did you know that a doctor charges $120.00 for a typical 15 minute office visit for an established uninsured patient but only receives between $25 and $50 from the insurance company of an insured patient – the rest is “written off” and the doctor doesn’t see a penny of it – this is why doctors now charge office visit co-pays, so they can double the amount of money they get. Wouldn’t it just be easier if they charged – and received $50 – $75 for that visit? As it’s set up now, the uninsured patient pays far too much just for being uninsured. There are some doctors who will negotiate fees with uninsured patients, and others who offer sometimes large discounts if the patient pays cash up front.

The insurance companies starve the doctors of their rightful fees, force them to cut corners at the patient’s expense, deny necessary procedures because they are expensive or “unnecessary”, and charge a hefty premium with lots of deductibles and in-covered charges to the patient. Everybody loses except the insurance companies.

anyway, back to the Health Trust Account. Employers who previously couldn’t afford to provide health insurance to their employees because of the premiums could afford to contribute to a Health Trust Account. Perhaps they could do a “matching funds” – whatever amount the employee designates be withheld from their paycheck could be matched by the employer so the employee gets a double deposit. Most employers even of quite small businesses could afford to contribute $50 or $100 per employee per month.

That money adds up very fast for healthy adults. If they never need to touch their Health Trust Account, they could enter their senior years able to opt out of the tax-dollar paid health care. After age 70, they could choose to use the Health Trust Account money as a secondary retirement fund for daily living expenses or use it to pay for their medical care.

Obviously, they get out of it whatever they put into it, and there should be no limit to the amount they can contribute to their Health Trust Fund.

To use it, they would present a debit card to the doctor, hospital, pharmacist, clinic, masseuse, chiropractor, nurse, or other health care provider and the amount would be debited from their Health Trust Account. The patient controls the funds, and decides what health care is needed and what isn’t.

Medical care would go back to being between the patient and their health care givers without the insurance companies controlling both sides of hte health equation.

For surgeries purely for cosmetic reasons (breast enlargements, penile enlargements, liposuction for those not seriously or morbidly obese, nose reshaping with no medical need, ear shaping, etc.), the patient would not be able to use the Health Trust Account funds and would have to find another way to fund these things, just as they do now. Of course, they may just have more money free to save for such things.

So tax dollars would pay for basic, preventive, and educational health care, supplemented by major medical care funded through private dollares – either via a tax-free Health Trust Account or through traditional major medical insurance programs.

The emergency rooms would return to being for life-threatening injuries and health crises and not be clogged with the uninsured and Medicaid people who can’t get the health care they need otherwise. We wouldn’t have children dying of an abcessed tooth because the parent couldn’t afford a $70 dental visit and a $20.00 antibiotic.

People who abuse the medical system now by going to the ER or the doctor for every little twinge would be more aware of the actual cost because it would be coming out of their Health Trust Fund. And yanno, if they’re paying for it, why shouldn’t they get the attention of a health care provider? It won’t be my tax dollars paying for that, nor will I be paying higher insurance premiums to cover the cost. The people who need it – children, the elderly, the disabled – will get it, and the able-bodied adults will have a system whereby they can get quality medical care at reasonable prices – and only the healthcare they need.

I would hope there would be no more gouging like when I was charged $30.00 for a box of preemie Pampers – and charged for 4 boxes a day (there were 90 diapers in a box of Preemie Pampers back then)- when my babies were in NICU and the retail value of that same box of Pampers was $3.75 and I used a box a week instead of 4 boxes a day. I would hope there would be no more “routine x-rays” if one is admitted to the hospital, and no more “routine pregnancy tests” when you enter the hospital if you’re female even if you’ve had a tubal ligation, a hysterectomy, or passed menopause.

Each time I went to the hospital for radiation or chemotherapy, I had to also pay for a regular pregnancy test even though I was taking a hormone assay that was more sensitive and definitive than a regular pregnancy test to chart the progress of the cancer, and I had to have a chest x-ray – upping the amount of rads I was receiving to unsafe levels with the radiation therapy. Had I been able to opt out of those (and other) unecessary tests, I certainly would have, but opting out of a few tests meant I was “refusing treatment” and I would have gotten no care at all.

That seriously needs to be revamped even if we don’t get a tiered universal health care system.

If we keep insurance as an option, we need to lose the “pre-existing condition” clause, and we need to allow the patient and doctor decide which tests and procedures are essential. There should never be a “routine chest x-ray” or a “routine pregnancy test”.

So, that’s what it boils down to: tax-subsidized basic health care, health education, and preventive care for everybody; tax-subsidized major medical care for children, disabled, and elderly; private subsidized major medical for able-bodied adults.

I’d like to see insurance dropped entirely, but the industry has enough political clout I doubt it will happen.

Still, I can hold out hope that we can be allowed non-insurance alternatives that won’t cost us the fortune being uninsured does.

Incipient Elders

Being old doesn’t make one an elder. There is a term in this article with which most Americans will be unfamiliar – Asbo. Asbo means “anti-social behavioral order”, a directive from authorities for the person to ease and desist from a behavior that has been deemed anti-social. In the case of this woman, it’s threatening her neighbors and hitting them with her walking cane. Violating the order too many times, or accumulating too many asbos can lead to fines and jail time.

The point of this post is that age alone doesn’t make a person an elder. We are right to be concerned when people who are younger than 50 years old (at a minimum, with today’s increased life span, 60 or 70 would be better) call themselves elders because we know they lack enough experiential perspective to truly be an elder, regardless of the knowledge and wisdom they’ve acquired in their lives.

Eldership is an array of patterns that align to make an individual an elder. That pattern is similar for those who achieve eldership, although it may be expressed in many different ways.

The patterns to look for include an ability to observe and to apply what one learns from observation to a vast array of situations. It’s not necessary for an elder to have experienced everything in order to be able to understand and offer advice on it. One needn’t get a finger caught in a spring-type mouse trap to know it hurts. One can also learn how to trigger such a trap safely, and to set it safely, through observation, and to share that information when needed.

Another part of the pattern of eldership is timing. It takes skill to know when to speak and when to refrain from speaking, when to take action and when to sit back and let things take their course. An elder has an uncanny knack, to the uninformed, of knowing when the right time is. It may be frustrating to those who haven’t achieved eldership yet to be caught up in an elder’s timing; that’s why they are the elder.

Communication also forms a large part of the pattern of eldership. Elders know when and how to communicate, and value the importance of keeping in touch. They have mastered the art of talanoa. Communication doesn’t mean vital information must be passed along at each exchange. Elders can pick up a lot from a simple “Heh” or a nod from across the street. They know the people for whom they are elder well enough to know each person’s individual habits and body language, and they use that information to keep tabs on people and to know what’s happening. They communicate not just with humans, but the gestalt of what’s around them – weather, traffic patterns, animal behavior, the greater ebb and flow of life around them.

Inside the pattern of communication is the pattern of community. Elders aren’t elders for each and every human being on earth. They are elders for their community, and that’s almost universally an in-person community. It’s not an exclusive community. New people can enter their orbit and be considered a part of the community very easily. The in-person community can be short-lived community, such as what exists at a Gather or festival, or it can be longer term, as in a coven or circle or House. It can be widespread or local, as far-flung family members who congregate for a family reunion or a special holy day, either annually or at regular intervals. The important part of this pattern of eldership is the in-person contact. I have never met a true on-line elder because a lot of the important pattern pieces don’t work in an on-line environment. There are people who are elders in their off-line lives, and many who can be perceived as elderish in on-line situations. Those who are perceived as elderish on line are very fine teachers, and that is a good thing to be. But that doesn’t make them elders. It takes more than pixels can convey to make a person an elder, and on-line, all we have are pixels.

Elders are themselves a pattern – a connection between past and future that is rooted in the present. Elders are aware of their place in this pattern. They know they are the ones who understand and uphold traditions, pass along knowledge and skills, and alter the traditions as needed so they can survive into the future, adapting to changing circumstances. Only elders can effectively change traditions because they understand why the tradition exists, what role the tradition fills, and how to alter it so it continues to be fulfilling to the practitioners of it.

It is these five patterns – observation, timing, communication, community, connection – that can help one determine if a person is an elder or a wannabe elder – or even an incipient elder who isn’t quite there yet. (We call these incipient elders “cronelescents”.) There are lesser patterns that comprise an elder, may of which are specific to their culture or community. These five patterns seem to be universal.

When an elder engages in anti-social behavior, it is for an important reason, usually to alter something within their community that needs adjusting. Elders are the best people to engage in society-defining rebellious behaviors. A true elder would not be violent or rude for selfish reasons, nor would they be so randomly. If a true elder is violent or rude, there has to be a reason much larger than themselves at the root of such behavior. They will do so to bring attention to an urgent problem, or to make an example or a statement. Most elders are pretty unobtrusive – present, but not the center of attention.

Elders may dress outrageously, drink, smoke, defy unfair laws, and behave outside the social norms. Or they may be the powerful model of their culture and society’s most desired behaviors. They may speak plainly or enigmatically. They may offer hints or be blatant in answering questions or offering advice. They will poke and pry where people feel they shouldn’t, because that’s the job of an elder – to go where they need to go, even if no one wants them there, and even if they themselves don’t want to be there.

Elders do not act like selfish, ill-mannered children, making demands of those about them, especially demands of respect or money. They don’t cause drama in their community. They don’t spread lies and rumors about others in their community. They don’t gather a cadre of sycophants about them. They don’t ignore important community issues. They don’t ignore the needs of the people in their community.

Sometimes, it’s hard for someone who isn’t an elder to tell the difference between someone who’s old and someone who’s grown into an elder.

It is possible for a formerly old person to become an elder – and not because some cutesy little munchkin converted them (a la Heidi). Some old people have it within them to be elders, and rise to the occasion when circumstances demand it. The potential to be an elder has to already be within the person. No one can be made an elder. Eldership isn’t something earned like a badge – do “x” of this and “y” of that, collect these points, write a paper about it all, and voila – you’re an elder. There are no hard and fast lessons that will turn anyone into an elder.

Becoming an elder is very much an individualized path of lessons and patterns and experiences and observations. It is not walked alone, for an elder is not a solitary person although they may be reserved or private. No one can say for sure who will become an elder and who will simply grow old. But this I know – no one under the age of 50 is a true elder. It takes time to walk those patterns and integrate them inside oneself; time to gain the right degree of perspective; time to accept that one is becoming an elder; time to mellow a bit from life’s urgencies.

This is not to insult those who feel as if they are elders who have yet to reach their 50 year anniversary. Without many elders around, it’s easy to be confused as to what an elder is, and how one becomes one. There are precious few role models in America, the Land of the Perpetually Youthful. If one has endured a harrowing experience, survived a brutal childhood or relationship, gained a post-graduate degree, are looked upon as knowledgeable and wise by those who are aspiring to gain more wisdom and knowledge, it’s easy to understand how one can become confused.

Then, there are those religions that have defined age roles of youth, parent, elder (maiden, mother, crone/youth, father, sage) in their rituals. Without true elders to fill the elder roles, people far too young are pushed into them so the religion can have their balance and conduct the full cycle of their rituals. Those who assume the religious mantel of elder in these rituals may well believe they are, indeed, elders. What this means, to me, is that those who assume ritual roles of elder are perhaps more disposed to becoming real elders later in life.

Real elders are much closer than one might think, and there are many more of them than most people realize.

In The Event

If you are ever taken in for questioning, here are a few tips to help keep you safe. It doesn’t matter if you are an innocent by-stander, a witness, or not involved at all. If the police take you in for questioning for any reason, they have the experience and the time to make sure that they will find you guilty of something. Ten years ago, I wouldn’t have offered these tips, because ten years ago, the police were often willing to believe in the innocence of most people. Today, that’s not true. Most police feel that if they bring you in for questioning, you are guilty, and all they have to do is pry your guilt out of you.

Thing is, with so many obsolete laws on the books, there’s bound to be one we’ve broken without intending to – or even knowing about. And there are some laws that can be interpreted in such a way as to make anyone appear guilty.

The police won’t hesitate to use that agianst you in the hopes that you will say something they can use – either against you or against the person they are questioning you about.

Number One Tip: Keep silent. Say nothing. Do not offer any information, no matter how sympathetic and understanding and friendly the interrogator seems, and especially not if they offer to cut a deal. They will use any information you give them, add it to information they have taken from other sources, and approach your friends and family to tell them you have spilled all. This makes you look like you betrayed your family and friends when you really didn’t, and no deals will be honored. Even if you have done nothing wrong, remember, there are thousands of laws on the books, and if you say anything, they can probably find something for which you are guilty. It doesn’t help that they are adding new laws faster than they can be distributed, and ignorance of the law is not a valid excuse in the eyes of the law. See, it’s illegal to wash your own hair in Oklahoma, or to have wire cutters in your pocket in Texas. There are other, equally obscure and absurd laws on the books. Keep silent.

Number Two Tip: If you must say something, do not say anything more than “May I have legal counsel, please?”. No matter how silly this answer sounds, do not say anything else. It doesn’t matter that we are no longer have access to legal counsel. We should continue to act as if the Constitution was still in force and still a viable, legal document.

Number Three Tip: Don’t believe the interrogators when they reveal some information they have and claim it came from a family member or friend. Assume they got it from some other source and are using it to force you to talk. Assume your family and friends are loyal and honest and would never betray you. Believe in your friends. Trust your friends. Don’t believe anything the interrogator tells you.

Number Four Tip: Keep Silent. I can’t emphasize this enough. Do not say anything, nothing, nada, zip. Keep your lips together and teeth locked. Smile, be polite, but don’t say anything.

I’m sad that times have come down to the need to know this. It stood me well when I needed it back in the 60’s and 70’s and may it help you in the new millennium.

Blogging for Choice

It’s been a year since I wrote this, and very little has changed for the better in that year. We’ve had states try to pass draconian anti-abortion laws, we’ve had one champion for women’s rights railroaded out of her authoritative position because she decided her people could offer women what they need. In the news, we read stories of women “being raped”, not of “men raping women”, and watched court cases of rape victims being further victimized. We’ve seen more women and children becoming homeless because they weren’t allowed a choice that could have prevented the whole problem. We have people actively and vociferously advocating having babies – in spite of the fact that we are breeding ourselves out of resources.

More and more, we need to take control of our reproduction, to stem the constant increase in our population. We need to consider the welfare of those who are already born and living in this world. We need to care for those who are alive now, and in need now.

I believe life, and the life of the soul, begins at conception. I do not believe sentience begins at conception. That is something that develops when the vessel it is meant to inhabit matures enough to nourish the seed of sentience and nurture it to fruition. Life is sacred. All life is sacred. I am morally opposed to the malicious taking of any life, but I believe life that already exists independently takes precedence over a potential life. Choice must be moral, ethical, and legal. Let me explain.

I choose life for myself and the children I bore, because I am inherently selfish and fluffy. I choose for no other woman because I am an American. It is the precise separation of religion and law that allows disparate faiths to thrive alongside one another, including disparities within religions, such as Catholics and Methodists. The American attitude of freedom of religion and the separation of church and state has ensured our safety in the practice of our beliefs, and our rights are not dependent upon the morality of the privileged few, but rather on higher ideals of justice, equality, and freedom.

I am pro-choice because it is the only moral choice to make when it involves other people.

Without choice, there can be no morality at all. There can only be slavery.

Consider. A woman who becomes pregnant has not just her unborn child to consider, but also any other children she may currently have, her own body, and other people dependent upon her. She is the custodian for all of them. She must be allowed the freedom to choose to add this unborn child to the family or to abort it for the greater good of those already born. If we take away that choice, then the unborn baby may be saved but at the cost of a far greater evil to the woman and to those already born.

Is it better to allow a woman her choice, knowing she may choose to abort in some cases, or do we remove that choice and most assuredly commit evil in every single case?

Life must be protected. There is no doubt about that. As a woman, it is my duty to protect the life of my unborn child, not the government’s, not some preacher’s, certainly not yours. It is also my duty to protect the lives of other children I may already have, and those living children take precedence over an unformed and unborn potentiality. It is my duty as a woman to protect the people already living in my care, and I must consider so very many things.

The welfare of the developing embryo is, like the embryo’s own tissues, too caught up in the mother’s own existence to be considered separately. The distinction between mother and child occurs gradually. In the beginning, when there is no distinction, when the embryo is incapable of independent viability, it is and must be entirely and completely the mother’s decision on how to safeguard all the lives within her care, from her own and the already-born to the unborn within her. The mother can, should, indeed, must, protect herself first, because she must be healthy and able to care for those dependent upon her. Then she must protect the already born who are in her care – whether those are older children of hers, her elderly parents or grandparents, cousins, kin, mates, mates’ kin, co-workers, neighbors. She has a large group of people to consider, not just the one unborn child.

Life must be protected, and the question becomes, whose life?

The pro-life argument is not one of law or physical technicalities, but of the spirit. It is not life with which they are concerned, but the soul. Let me address this from my own Numenist perspective.

To have any integrity of the human soul at all, we must be allowed to know, and knowing, to choose our path. To remove a person’s right to choose is tantamount to gainsaying the spiritual concept of free will. Free will is an important part of Numenism. Those who would prevent a woman from making a choice to bear or abort the unborn embryo may think they are stopping a terrible crime, but what they are actually doing is harming everyone – everyone connected with the woman, everyone in that woman’s neighborhood, society, culture, and religion. They are stifling spiritual growth, playing god in an unhealthy way, and abusing the intelligence granted us.

It is fine to be pro-life. If you can change someone’s mind with love, compassionate words, and physical support, so much the better. It is not acceptable on a spiritual level to force someone to make choices they would not make because you feel it is the right thing for them to do. Removing choice from someone removes their humanity, their adulthood, their hard-won maturity. It makes of them slaves. Slaves have no choice in what they do – it is all controlled by someone else. Spiritual slavery is as terrible as physical slavery. I, personally, think spiritual slavery is more terrible than physical slavery, for physical slavery has avenues of escape, even if that escape is death. Spiritual slavery offers no escape, for even death doesn’t guarantee freedom.

This isn’t about “killing babies”, it is about the freedom of the human soul. It is about being allowed to choose our destinies. It is about being allowed to have respect for our own reproductive lives, and it is about having no shame when we protect ourselves by doing what we must.

I could never ask a woman to risk her life for a pregnancy she did not want. I could never ask a woman to shoulder a lifetime responsibility she does not feel she can bear with grace. I could never presume to make a life-altering decision for anyone not myself. I didn’t even have my son circumcised so he could make that decision for himself when he was old enough. How could I have the utter arrogance to decide if a woman would bear child or not?

I believe that abortion is the taking of a life, but it is not murder. There is no negative stigma of a woman choosing to preserve the emotional, physical, and mental well being of her life and the lives of those already dependent upon her. Abortion is a method of self-defense and protection for her and her world. To label a woman who has had to choose an abortion with the same name as the people who deliberately drown their children or shoot them or starve them is a disservice to the soul of society. And when we burden society’s soul with too many negatives, it responds in harmful ways. Those already born become less valuable, more disposable. People who know their lives are not valued in turn place little value on other people, and violence, greed, and callousness become common.

The reality of abortion is not black or white. It is not good or evil. It is human struggle, filled with blood and grief and fear and pain and humiliation. Nobody plans to get pregnant just so they can have an abortion. Abortion is not used as a primary method of birth control, not by any sane, valued being. Birth control methods fail, and abortion is a back-up for that. Men take advantage of women via rape, and abortion is there to help protect the woman from one major consequence of the man’s violent act. Only the woman can determine if she is capable of caring for a pregnancy forced on her through violence, or through failed birth control.

And that brings us to what our society would consider the dark side of abortion and what I consider the bright side of it. Relief. Abortion is a safety valve for families. The choice to abort or not allows the woman and her family freedom and safety. It is a considered action that dignifies the value of human life and the human soul by considering all parts of the equation and not just the one unknown cipher. Like any act of great human consequence, there are times when abortion is the right and only thing to do, and times when it is a terrible mistake. The pregnant woman is the only one who can make that decision, and once made, we, as a society, cannot ethically and morally judge her choice, not and remain a moral and ethical society.

Who are we to second-guess her choice, a choice that is never as simple or easy as it sounds?

We have the wealth, the technology, and the ability to make every child born a wanted child, to prevent unwanted pregnancies, to safely abort dangerous or unwanted pregnancies, to provide support while any children are entirely dependent upon the mother, to make families stronger and safer.

But we don’t.

As a society, we Americans devalue the mother, we force women into untenable positions to assuage the vocal demands of a small group of control freaks, we force children into untenable lives of poverty and violence, we make all of society colder, meaner, and more selfish, and we do this by preventing women from being honored, from making the hard choices they must make. Abortion is not easy. It is as life-altering a decision as giving birth, and there’s not a woman who has had an abortion who doesn’t regret the need for that decision. They may not regret the decision itself, they may rejoice that they could have that choice, but they will always regret the need that forced the decision upon them.

This isn’t even addressing the primary reason for allowing women to make the choice to carry or abort the pregnancy – the spiritual growth that such decisions will bring. By abrogating the woman’s right to choose, we stunt her spiritual growth. We enslave her soul and the souls of all her children and dependents.

Perhaps there are those who want women to remain spiritually small and weak; they are themselves small-spirited.

There are those who will cry out, “But what about the father’s right to choose?”

And to them I answer: The father’s right to choose takes place before the act of coition and orgasm. Once he decides to squirt his sperm and conception occurs, he hands over the decision for what happens next to the woman. It is her body, her life, her family, her community, her spiritual well-being that informs her decision. She may choose to allow him a part in her decision, but it is ultimately and completely her decision, and it will remain hers until we develop something along the lines of the Bujoldian uterine replicators. When we have artificial wombs that put no woman’s life at risk to carry a baby to term, that involve no woman’s emotions, bodies, or families; then men can decide to take custody of the embryo, grow it in the artificial womb, and raise it.

When women can walk away from the pregnancy as easily as men can, then men can decide.

So, if men want to make that decision, to take the lifetime responsibility of growing and rearing a child, they should hustle and develop working artificial wombs as soon as they can. Until then, they need to take responsibility for their fertility, either through using condoms and a spermicide, through abstinence, through vasectomy, through the male birth control pill, through self-control. And they must always, always be aware that birth control does indeed fail, that surgical sterilization isn’t always 100%, and that, like most humans, women make mistakes, are forgetful, may have an idiosyncratic reaction to birth control, and sometimes, sometimes, in spite of all the effort to the contrary, pregnancy occurs.

Abortion is a safety valve for those instances. For men as well as women.

Abortion is never an easy choice. No matter what the media tries to make us believe, abortion is a dreadful burden, a life-altering choice that haunts the women who must choose it for the rest of their lives. If a woman is impregnated by a man – through failed birth control, through lies, through rape, through changed circumstances – she has very few options. Every one of those options has a strong potential to be detrimental to her health, her spirit, her mental well-being, her finances – and the health, well-being, and care of those already alive and in her care.

If a woman lives where she can still choose abortion, she has to undergo a risky surgical procedure to free herself of the unwanted pregnancy – a man walks away without having to undergo any kind of surgical procedure or alteration to his body.

If, for religious or ethical reasons or, increasingly often, for lack of adequate medical care in her community, she has to carry the unwanted pregnancy to term, she risks a host of ailments, up to and including death. A man gets to walk away without any kind of damage to his body and certainly without any fear of dying for it.

If a woman chooses to place the child for adoption, she can’t do so without the father’s permission – permission he can deny just to punish her – and it is a punishment to both the mother and the poor unwanted child, to have to work and spend money to feed, house, clothe, and educate that unwanted child, frequently without any support whatsoever from the father – who gets to walk away without losing a penny or a moment’s sleep over the lives he’s just destroyed. Even if a court of law determines he should pay child support, all he has to do is walk away. A woman who walks away from her baby is prosecuted for child abandonment at best, and child abuse at worst.

If the couple are married when the child is conceived and born, if the man decides he no longer wants to be responsible for the child he helped bring into the world, all he has to do is walk away. No one condemns him for it. No one demands he pay for the life he helped create. No one blames him if he denies the child is his. After all, short of DNA testing, there’s no proof, not like there is when a woman gives birth. Maternity is rarely in doubt.

So many men have taken the option to just walk away, it’s a wonder women haven’t risen up and reacted with far greater anger and made far stronger demands. It’s a wonder women even consider giving men any choice at all.

Men make their decision to impregnate women the moment they allow their sperm to come into contact with a fertile egg. If men failed to use birth control themselves, (via abstinence, condoms, male birth control, self control, or vasectomy), then they are as liable for the unwanted child as the women they impregnate – more so, perhaps, because they could always choose to walk away and (radical idea) not leak sperm in inappropriate places.

The burden of birth control is not and should not be entirely upon the woman.

Me, I’d like to see every child born be a wanted child – planned and anticipated and hoped for. That means everyone has to own up to their part in the procreation process – from erection to childbirth, and take responsibility for the results of their choices.

That means we need a wide variety of choices, from better birth control for both genders to better behavior from men and women to better health care. We need artificial wombs so women can walk away from a pregnancy as easily as men do. We need better methods of adoption and fosterage. We need more humane peer pressure.

And we need to allow women the freedom to choose and the access to knowledgeable and skilled physicians to help them in their choice.

And men? If you want to have a choice in the continuance of a pregnancy – get busy developing artificial wombs. When you build those wombs, then you can choose.

60 Things

Being as I will soon be 62, I thought I’d make a list of the 60 things I’ve learned during those years.

In no particular order:

1. The most important sex organ is the brain. This may vary for men, but for me, it works.
2. Nice matters.
3. All knowledge is worth having.
4. If a relationship has to be secret, it’s not a relationship.
5. When in doubt, don’t. Wait a bit, see what happens, gather more info.
6. Vote “No” on money issues until you fully understand the issue.
7. Your job won’t take care of you when you’re sick. Your friends and family will. Stay in touch.
8. No one is in charge of your attitude except you. So take charge.
9. Hungry people need food before they need anything else or can do anything else.
10. Don’t save your special things for special occassions. Today is special.
11. Party often with well-loved friends.
12. Don’t just talk about doing something. Do it.
13. Eat chocolate every day.
14. Indulge in your imagination.
15. Writers write. Carpenters build. Painters paint. Find what you are, then be it.
16. What other people think of you is none of your business.
17. What you think of yourself is your business.
18. Whatever’s happening now won’t last forever.
19. You don’t have to win every argument.
20. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. Be prepared.
21. Don’t let others define who you are.
22. Time really does heal all wounds, but not if you keep picking at the scabs.
23. Live in the moment, but plan for the future.
24. Remember the past, but don’t live in it.
25. Don’t compare your life to others’; you have no idea what they have faced and have yet to face.
26. Start preparing for your retirement before you turn 18 – and don’t let anyone else control your retirement funds but you.
27. Learn to budget.
28. Life is a gift, and each day is a new revelation.
29. Your word is ultimately all you really have, so take good care of it.
30. Courage, faith, and lunch with friends are important.
31. The more often you see friends and family, the less shocked you are by the changes.
32. Life is not fair, which is why we should do all we can to even the odds.
33. Your enemies are your potential friends; be open to that.
34. Your life is your responsibility; but help is always nice.
35. It’s easier to insist on being wrong than it is to admit ignorance.
36. We get some kind of weather nearly every day. That’s so we always have at least one thing to talk about.
37. Keep doing openly what’s not socially acceptable and eventually society will change – or you’ll be killed.
38. The true artist is the one who insists on creating a supply even if there is no demand.
39. It takes courage to say no. Or yes. Or sometimes, anything at all. Be courageous.
40. If you go through life too fast, it will all be a blur.
41. If you don’t do it today, what will you have to be glad or sorry about tomorrow?
42. For some, success depends on being well-known; for others, it depends on never being found out.
43. It’s possible to be able to do something very well that nobody ever wants done. Don’t let that stop you from doing it.
44. Everyone has a birthday in the same year, so celebrate!
45. Reasonable thought can only go so far, then you must either be unreasonable or stop thinking. I prefer to be unreasonable.
46. People who need to get older are luckier than people who need to get younger.
47. People born into happy families speak love as their native language, but that doesn’t mean others can’t learn to speak love as well.
48. Babies are made in a few months, but it takes 80 years to make an 80 year old.
49. It costs money to stay healthy, but it costs a fortune to be sick.
50. Take care of all you love – and try to love that for which you must care.
51. So many possibilities have come true in my lifetime that I’m willing to believe almost anything.
52. Don’t destroy the hypocrisy of Christmas – that’s the fun part.
53. A smile is one of the greatest sights in the world, and it’s free.
54. If you keep putting off decisions, someone will make them for you – and you might not like them.
55. There are no important differences between men and women; it’s the unimportant ones that are fascinating.
56. In a democracy, every little idea can grow up to be national policy. That’s why we need to be vigilant, so we can weed out the wrong ones before the roots grow too deeply.
57. Noise is more fun to make than to hear, so keep that in mind when someone else’s noise annoys you.
58. If you teach someone the meaning of freedom, they will find a way to be free.
59. Use facts. You can prove anything that’s even remotely true with facts.
60. There is no Truth – only stories.

What’s In Your

Purse, bag, backpack, car, and/or survial bag?

I carry a “layered” purse. The outer layer, the big bag that contains all the rest, is actually Itzl’s bag. It contains his food, treats, bowls, water (he drinks Ozarka, in case you’re interested), extra sweaters in the winter, along with his raincoat and snowboots, a reflective jacket with his service dog patches, his ID papers, a few toys, his harness and leash, and his emergency medical kit – enough stuff to keep him for at least 2 weeks. It also contains a full sized spiral bound notebook and a book or two to read. The flap has a pocket in that I sewed in for pens, a leatherman tool, a mini level, a travel toothbrush and toothpaste.

There’s still room enough inside his bag for my shoulder purse. My purse contains a measuring tape, a pocket knife, a screwdriver set, a pocket sized copy of the US Constitution, my keys and assorted keycards, spare keys for various people who might need them, spare batteries, a small alarm clock (I don’t wear a watch), a small notebook and pen, and my wallet.

The wallet can be carried alone. It contains cash, spare keys and keycards, a small nail clipper, pen and notebook.

Itzl’s bag is also large enough to carry around the clunky (but much loved) digital camera case, which has the battery charger and a box of floppies in it, a small notebook and pen.

I don’t carry the whole kit all the time. But I do have it near me or reasonably accessible. The wallet is the one essential that does go with me everywhere, and it pops out of the layers easy enough.

I don’t carry a backpack.

My car is loaded. Literally.

It’s an old Hyundai with an amazing anount of hidden storage space in it, and I’ve filled every cubby with assorted survival gear. In no particular order, I have several gallons of – well, right now, ice – but it’s usually water, 2 wools blankets, 4 emergency blankets, a tent that sleeps four, enough tarp to make 2 lean-to style tents with ground cover, 4 folding chairs, a couple of fishing poles and fishing gear, a cook pot, a dutch oven with tripod and chain, 4 sleeping bags, a portable still, a full field medical kit, a full herbal medicine kit, tea strainers, a cutting board and set of good culinary knives, a couple of axes, a hammer, a rubber mallet, a couple of different saws, a case of mixed MREs, a flint and steel kit with char cloth and a tin to make more char cloth, several bottles of GermX, a solar shower set, a collapsible port-a-potty and bags, degradeable toilet paper, a pair of hammocks, mosquito netting, a couple of shakeable flashlights, soap, shampoo, a washbasin, a shovel and machete, a bone saw, a pyromid stove, enough eating gear for 4, cooking utensils, a GPS, a three month supply of water purification tablets, a bow and a quiver full of arrows, some rabbit snares, an air cooled “refrigerator”, some rain ponchos, an umbrella, spare gear for Itzl, and spare clothes and my other pair of shoes. There’s also a box of mixed foods for the assorted pets, food dishes, leashes, and toys.

And there’s still room for 4 people to ride around in the car, and for groceries when I shop. And to slide in an 8 foot countertop or folding table. And to fit in the carriers for all the critters. Although, some of the carriers would have to be held on people’s laps.

So, what’s in your purse, bag, car, backpack, and/or survial bag?

Ice

Well, we are now in our third day of ice falling from the sky.

Surprisingly, for as long as it’s been falling, we don’t have more than an inch or so on the ground. Since it’s sleet rather than freezing rain, most of it is on the ground and not bogging down trees and powerlines. Losing power is a remote possibility for us.

But it’s still cold! 23º, overcast, and ice coated.

Tomorrow is a state holiday so I don’t have to worry about trudging out into the cold to go to work. But Tuesday won’t be any warmer.

The roads will be better, probably slushy where it isn’t clear, and possibly with patches of black ice, but better than today.

A friend, who’s not on LJ, sent me an email about a writing contest sponsored by Simon and Schuster and Borders, via Gather.com. I’ve decided to enter it. This may be my chance to finally get into fictional print. The problem is that I don’t think most of my stories are suitable for Simon and Schuster and we can only enter once. The paranormal romance I started is about the only story I have written or semi-written that they may consider. I’ll finish that up, enter it, and see what happens. I have until March – plenty of time to write it, edit it, clean it up.

Oh, and I joined Gather.com. It looks interesting, although there are few venues for me there – mostly Food, Writing, and the Random Musings communities so far. I’m not politically savvy enough to join most of the political communities, and the Religion communities are heavily, heavily slanted towards Christianity – which is great for Christians, not so good for me.

Iced In

1-12-07

An ice storm is coating most of Oklahoma right now.

I didn’t pattern this storm becaues it’s not MedFaire (about the only time of the year I do weather patterning), so I didn’t expect it to move in until later this evening – well after I’d stocked up for the storm.

Fortunately, unlike the snow storm in November, we were not only allowed to leave work early, we were actively encouraged to leave.

I took advantage of the early departure to stop in at Borders (because their parking lot is easier to get in and out of in icy weather – they plow it hourly and spread lots of Ice Melt) to buy the most essential thing one needs for a storm – books!

Because I plan to write a paranormal romance for a writer’s contest in March, I bought half a dozen paranormal romances to read over the weekend. Research, you know?

I’ve made a brief outline of the novel I plan to write. So far, I haven’t encountered any paranormal romances that involve the paranormal creature I plan to make the focal point of my novel. Most of them tend to involve the Fae, werewolves and other were-creatures (including one mermaid), and vampires. Mine will have those in the novel, but they’ll be minor characters, with only brief walk-ons.

I’m setting it in Cherokee-owned casino/hotel (taking gross liberties with how casinos and hotels operate). The heroine is a night manager at the hotel portion. She purchased her love interest (unbeknownst to her) and will be unwrapping him soon and dealing with all the otherworldly problems he brings with him. End result: True Love.

At least, that’s the plan.

And, being iced in this extended weekend will give me plenty of time to work on both the research end and the writing end – and for food, we’ll eat off sticks.

Can life get any better than this?

You CAN Have Your Cake and Eat It, too

I’ve been reading about people who sign compacts to not buy anything at all but food, medicine, and toiletries for a year, and others who decide not to buy anything new but food, medicine, and toiletries, and others who live by dumpster diving, getting even their food, medicine, and toiletries from other people’s trash. The purpose, for them, is to reduce their impact on the environment. That’s a worthy goal, but honestly, I don’t see how deprivation will achieve it.

We have to look at living lightly from a variety of perspectives. Consuming anything at all has an impact, the goal is to reduce that impact. Don’t sign agreements that limit what you will buy. Consider instead ones that suggest how you buy. Anything you acquire has both an economic and an environmental impact – whether you buy it new, used, or acquire it through dumpster diving. Spend some time before you embark on a save the environment course of living by actually researching how much of an impact your current lifestyle has and the impact your proposed lifestyle will have. Sometimes, in attempting to be environmentally conscious and economically aware, the course chosen does the opposite intended.

Accept, at the beginning, that anything you choose to do will have both an
economic and an environmental impact. You can’t avoid it. Find instead an
achievable goal – reducing the clutter in your life, for example, or weaning
yourself from impulse buying, or improving your own financial security. Create
a set of actions that will help you achieve that goal, and make those acts a
habit. Review your habits in depth every 5 years. Anymore often than that, and
you won’t be able to tell if what you’ve been doing actually works – some things
take a longer time to manifest than others, and you want to give it all a
chance. Besides, doing a yearly in-depth review becomes a chore that gets put
off because it is time-consuming and labor intensive. Do a brief overview
yearly and save the in-depth one for a five year review.

There are several steps to this process, don’t try to implement changes until
you’ve gone through all the steps. It makes more sense and you’ll be more
likely to stay on track. No shiny distractions.

Step One: This one will take a bit of time, but it’s all part and parcel with
almost every goal to simplify your life, life more environmentally aware,
increase your personal financial security, have a reduced economic impact on
society, or just make yourself feel better and happier. Do take all the time
you need to complete this step. The first thing you need to do with it is buy
yourself a spiral bound notebook or an insert for your day-runner that you can
write in daily. Keep this with you. In it write down every single thing you do
– from stretching and hitting the snooze button three times on your clock before
you get up to how long your morning grooming routine takes to whether you stop
to buy a newspaper or breakfast snack on the way to work clear up to your
bedtime time routine when you turn the lights out and snuggle down to sleep.
Everything. Stopping to feed the ducks, or watch kids play street hockey.
Driving aimlessly around town looking for someplace that appeals to you for
lunch. Chatting on the phone. Text messaging your co-workers. Tapping a
pencil against your teeth while you think. Watching TV or listening to your
iPod. All of it. Every last second of time you spend doing whatever it is you
do. At minimum, this might take a week, for the truly obsessive-compulsive.
Most people will take a month and think they’re done, but I think it should take
at least one year – so you include all the various holiday activities and
seasonal activities in all of this. This is where having a spreadsheet comes in
really handy, so enter the data you accumulate in your notebook daily or weekly
until you’re satisfied you’ve listed every thing you are most likely to do
throughout the year. Your time is one of your most valuable resources, and you
need to know exactly how you spend it. You can do other steps while you are
doing the other steps. Don’t forget to include the time you spend on this
project in your log of activities.

Bear in mind that if you work a 40-hour week, you will spend 2080 hours a year
at work, and probably about 520 hours a year getting to and from work. If you
sleep 8 hours a night, you will spend about 2920 hours sleeping, and another 365
hours a year preparing to sleep, and another 365 hours a year waking up.
Everyone has 8760 hours in the year, and we’ve already filled about 6250 hours
with work and sleep and waking. Then there are the routine tasks: grocery
shopping, clothes shopping, housecleaning, walking the dog, preparing meals or
taking the time to buy prepared meals, voting, keeping current with the news and
weather, lawn care, shoveling snow, doctor’s appointments, other types of
appointments, etc. Figure about 720 hours a year on necessary household and
personal tasks – that goes up if you have large gardens or lots of snow or
remodeling projects or frequent illnesses. That brings the total on work,
sleeping, waking, and necessary tasks to 6970. You have 1760 free hours a year
that aren’t dedicated to work, work-related tasks, or necessary survival tasks.
Approximately 260 days are work days, which means you have 3.2 hours a workday
free, and 9 hours a day on weekends. I have not removed holiday hours from work
hours because those vary widely, so you may have more free hours than 1760 a
year. Conversely, if you work longer hours, you’ll have less free time.

And if you have children, you need to factor in the time it takes for their
needs – trips to the doctor, school, and extracurricular activities, play
times, “drag” time waiting for them to get ready, extra time for meals and
shopping, appointments with teachers and school administrators, PTA meetings,
etc. In fact, if you have children, consider that the bulk of your free time
will be dedicated to them for at least 18 years. You will need to plan
carefully to have any free time to yourself and to meet your goals.

Pets also take time. You need to clean up after them, feed them, play with
them, train them, take them to the vet. Don’t forget to factor their needs into
your time.

Do you begin to understand why we feel so rushed and harried – we have so little
actual free time for personal pleasure and with which to pursue our own goals?

Step Two: Inventory everything you own. Everything, yes, even the report cards
you kept from your grade school, and your kids’ reports cards. Old
correspondence and greeting cards. Bits of ribbons and stray screws and nails.
Write it all down. It’s more fun to do this with someone – one person calls out
what they find, the other writes it down. Obviously, we are keeping the
computer and internet service, so use it. Type the inventory into a spreadsheet
like Excel or database program like Access. Use Library Thing to inventory your
books and music collection. Don’t sort, separate, or throw away anything at
this point. You can make separate lists – one for each room,and include any
outdoor space you may have, like garage, storage shed, greenhouse, doghouse,
rabbit hutches, poolroom; just don’t pile things into separate piles of “keep”,
“toss”, “sell”, etc. You want a full and complete inventory.

You might want a separate list for food items and consumables like toilet paper,
cleaning supplies, and toiletries, because these quantities may change as you
conduct the inventory simply because you’ll need to use them, and replace them.

That separate list of food is useful for many other things, which segues into
Step Three.

Step Three: Inventory your food. All of it, including herbs, spices, and
half-used packets of powdered cheese sauce. Don’t forget the Mystery Tubs of
leftovers in the refrigerator. On this list, it’s perfectly acceptable
to toss foods well past their expiration dates or ones that are close to
attaining sentience in their own right. Moldy, mildewy, spoiled, soured, or
otherwise bad foods need to go. Inventory only the edible foods.

A part of this inventory will include meals – list what you eat at each meal,
whether you cooked or prepared it at home or ate in a restaurant or at a
friend’s house. All three of these lists will be very important when you get to
Step Six and beyond.

Did you know that in some countries, people are taxed on the size of their
refrigerators, and few have the behemoths we do? We store far too many things
in our refrigerators, and then forget about them because we tend to have
refrigerators larger than we actually need. Freezers are a different matter.
We actually need much larger freezers than the typical family has. That’s
something to ponder as you continue on to

Step Four: Make a list of your personal goals, short term and long term.
Consider how much money you’d like to save, whether you want to invest any
money, vacations you want to take, things you want to own, things you want to do
or learn how to do, how much de-cluttering you want to do, people you’d like to
keep as friends, dietary changes you want to make, volunteer work you want to
do, etc. List it all, even the improbable and impossible.

Step Five: For each of the goals you listed in Step Four, make a list of the
steps you need to take to achieve that goal. If you know the time each step
will take, include that.

So – look at the goals you’ve made, the time they’ll take and compare it to the
time you actually have. Don’t forget to factor in time in which to do
absolutely nothing or to sleep in, and give yourself a bit of leeway for
unexpected opportunities or tasks.

Now, go through your list of goals and prioritize them based on what you now
know about your available time. Decide which ones you really want to do (and
that can certainly be all of them, if you want). Develop a time frame – a
humanly accomplishable time frame, in which to do them. And don’t hesitate to
decline any tasks that don’t fit into the time frame and “wiggle room” you’ve
given yourself.

Be sure to plan for simplifying your life as a top priority item. When you’re
finished, you’ll be using less time to keep things tidy and clean and organized.
It’s worth it to spend the time now to buy yourself more time later.

The more free time you can make for yourself, the more time you’ll have for
other pursuits.

Now, Step Six: What to do with all those lists you made. That first list is
how much time you spend on your activities. Look it over carefully and see
where you can rearrange the time you spend on things. Consider your commute
time – can you reduce it by using another method to travel to and from work, or
work from home part of the time? How about transferring to a closer work
location? Is it possible to take that unpaid lunch hour and move it to the
start or end of your work day to give you more time that isn’t spent at work?
Any free time you can create is your time. Your boss isn’t paying you
for your commute times or your lunch hour, so find out how you can reclaim those
hours for yourself.

What about other tasks? Can you reduce the number of times you do them, like
shopping once a week or once every two weeks instead of two or three times a
week? Or can you combine tasks – like dropping your car off for the oil change
and walking to the nearby grocery store to shop or pay bills at a nearby bank or
place that accepts payments? Can you schedule everyone to have routine health
care done at the same time? Remember, this is your time you’re spending, and
you have a list of things you plan to do. Areas you cannot trim too far are the
ones dedicated to your children and your pets. You’ll just have to plan around
those times and accept that those times are dedicated times.

Look at your deadlines. Are you always a day late on bills and having to pay
late fees? What other fees do you have to pay because you didn’t get a chance
to do things in a timely manner? Here’s where you’re plotting and planning your
time, so be sure to make a schedule for paying bills, filing taxes, renewing
memberships and subscriptions, and doing other things that have deadlines. One
of those large graph calendars would be good for this – and the best place to
hang it is either beside the refrigerator or the computer, with a pen attached
so you can write in appointments and such as they come up.

Step Seven: In List Two, you made an inventory of all the things you own. Take
the time now to go through that list and sort – on the computer screen, by room,
the things you must keep, the things you’d like to keep, the room it should be
in (funny, how things travel to odd places about the house, isn’t it?), the
things you never use, the things you don’t want anymore, that are broken, worn
out, past their expiration date, or that you can’t figure out how to use. Print
these lists out and take them to those rooms with boxes labeled: Don’t Want and
Broken. Fill the boxes up. Figure out if the broken things can be fixed and if
you want to keep them enough to fix them. Sell these things on eBay or put them
up on Craigslist or Freecycle.

What’s left needs to be examined to see if they, too, need fixing, cleaning, or
refurbishing. You may need to invest in proper storage or display for them –
shelves for books, for example. When you’re moving and cleaning things, take
some time to paint or paper or wash your walls, baseboards, lintels, window and
door frames, and other architectural fixtures. Take down and launder or replace
curtains or blinds. Put everything back in its new and proper place.

Do this one room at a time. Don’t expect to get it all done over a single
weekend. If you’re a pack rat by inclination or genetics, expect it to take
months to get through all of this. You’re spending a lot of time on simplifying
your life, but when you’re done, you will find you have more free time.

Step Eight: In List Three, you listed all the foods you have on hand, and
tossed all the expired and spoiled foods. Now, look over the list and see what
your diet is like. Are there places where you could streamline it, condense
shopping trips, buy locally? Are there foods you regularly buy that you never
really eat? Stop buying them. Are there things you wish you had on hand that
you never do? Add them to your shopping list. Do you want to explore new
cuisines? Here’s the time and place to tailor that to your life. Do you eat
out more than you think you should – or less? Here’s the place to rectify that.

With your inventory printed out and in hand, you can go through your pantry and
clean things up even more, organize them, and make things convenient for your
use. Don’t hesitate to do things like re-arrange the kitchen equipment, trade
the large refrigerator for a smaller one and add a freezer. Put in shelves for
your canned and jarred foods if you need to. Simple ones, like the expensive
Swedish modular shelving, can be made from dowel rods for the shelves and 2×2’s
for the supports (or 1×2’s for the shelves and either 2×2’s or 4×4’s for the
supports), or buy “L” brackets and screw the shelves directly to the walls, or
buy pre-made shelves. Organizing your foods will make a tremendous difference
in streamlining your meal preparations – and that frees up a bit of your time.

Now, with these eight steps, you’ve organized your home, de-cluttered your life,
saved a bit of money, and altered your diet. From here, you can decide how much
further you will go. Step Nine is all about the future.

Step Nine: Remember, all of this started because you were interested in “going
green”, or reducing your impact on the environment and the economy, or to
simplify your life. In the previous eight steps, you’ve settled your life so
you can do just that. Now, you have time to ride a bicycle to work (assuming
you live close enough to work to do that), or choose to buy less and consume
less.

Most places will tell you to just stop buying things, but that’s not so easy.
What I recommend is the “wait for it” method. Never go shopping without a list.
Buy only what’s on the list. If it’s not on the list and you see it and want to
buy it, walk away. Go home. Think about it. Think about how many hours you
have to work to pay for it. If you still want it after going home and thinking
about it, put it on the shopping list. When you go shopping, if you still want
it, it’s on your list; you’ve budgeted for it, and given yourself permission to
buy it. This gives you a cooling off period, keeps you in your budget, and
reduces your spending. You’re less likely to reach for that magazine or candy
bar if you have taught yourself to wait for it.

Anticipation is a highly underrated tool. Given the passage of enough time,
you’ll either determine you really do need whatever you wanted on impulse, or
you’ll realize you didn’t need or want it after all; it was just a neat gadget
with which to re-clutter your house.

Shop at thrift stores, second hand stores, or acquire things from Craigslist or
Freecycle,or paperbackswap.com, to reduce your personal expenditures and
slightly reduce the environmental impact (it doesn’t realistically reduce it by
much because if you’re buying it used, someone else is probably repalcing it
with a new version). If it squicks you to buy something used (like shoes or
gloves or mattresses), go ahead and buy it new, but do some comparison shopping
and buy brands you can support in good conscience.

One thing I do recommend is applying the concept of permaculture to your kitchen
and home – make it a cohesive and interrelated whole. To quote one of the
founders of permaculture, Bill Mollison, “permaculture is urging complete
cooperation between each other and every other thing, animate and inanimate.”
We want to care for the earth, care for people, distribute the surplus and
re-invest in the earth and the people. That can be done on a small scale within
the home. Every element in a design should have multiple functions within the
home, serve several purposes, and be related to one another in use and setting.
Think of the kitchen, where the stove, sink, and food storage are located close
together. Your counter tops, equipment, and books related to cooking are all
together within easy reach and function together as a unit. Expand this type of
functionality throughout the house, letting the design and the furnishings flow
from one use to another. Consider how friends and family tend to gather in the
kitchen during visits, and it seems natural to bring the two rooms together with
a blurred and open border between them, so the functions of entertainment and
visitors mingles with the function of feeding everyone. Think of other ways you
can blur the borders between rooms and their functions and even with the
outdoors.

Energy-wise, in the home, consider how the home is situated towards the sun, and
use it for lighting and supplemental heating. Consider how your home is related
to your neighbors, your friends, where you work, shop, and play, and see how you
can maximize a permaculture concept there. You can’t get cooperation from a
divided and hierarchical system, but it’s natural to a “guild” or community type
system, where each element depends upon the others. That recognition of
dependence is the true “greening”. If you want to be environmentally and
economically conscious, rather than buying “green” things just because they are
labeled as “green”, consider their place in a community of appliances, supplies,
things, people, critters, and uses. Even things which aren’t technically
“green” or labeled as “green” can be so, if used appropriately. Once you’ve
inventoried and de-cluttered your home, organizing it along permaculture lines
should be easy enough. Then, it follows that the things you come to need and
want will fit in with the permaculture concept and you’ll find yourself buying
less. When you do buy, you will buy better – better quality, a better fit to
you and your chosen lifestyle, and better for the environment.

It may not be better for the national economy, which is based in consumerism and
obsoletism, but it will be better for your personal economy.
And that, in nine time-consuming, but comparatively easy steps, is one way to
become more environmentally and economically conscious and to live a lifestyle
that is greener and better for the world and for you.

More on WoodSpirits

When we (Linda, Mike, Teresa, John, and me) first tossed the idea around, we
thought of organizing it along the lines of traditional youth organizations like
Camp Fire, Scouts, The Y Indian Guides, Boys and Girls Clubs, etc. Small groups
of people would meet regularly – weekly or monthly as schedules permitted to
plan out activities, do them, and have small awards ceremonies. It also gives
an excuse to display the patched and pearly banner.

It would
operate mostly on the honor system. We’re adults, and we know that cheating
does us no good in the end. We wouldn’t have to report to some central agency
to order pearls or patches. I personally would suggest no fundraising for
supporting your local club. We are adults and are clever enough to find
ways to afford our fun.

We didn’t visualize this ever becoming a tax exempt
organization because it’s a purely selfish club – for the purpose of having fun.
That is not a tax deductible expense, even if our Declaration of Independence
says that the “pursuit of happiness” is one of our rights. That’s a primary
reason for not doing fund-raising. If you want to stay free of the taxman,
don’t collect donations or do fundraising for your WoodSpirits group.

There
should be someone who facilitates communications – keeps an emailing list, group
blog, makes a newsletter, maintains the phone tree, keeps minutes, etc. There
should be someone who calls the meetings and organizes them – finds the meeting
location, arranges field trips, makes sure everyone has supplies, etc. If you
do rough camping, there should be someone who has basic rescue and woods craft
skills. Any offices beyond that are up to individual groups. If you decide
there should be group supplies, or to pool money for field trips, etc, you
probably need a treasurer or bookkeeper.

The symbol we chose back then was a
winged acorn, because while we were adults, we were still in the process of
learning. The wings represent the fun we have learning and doing things. The
wings have been variously depicted as butterfly wings, oak leaves, dragonfly
wings, bat wings, bird wings, or just feathers. We haven’t picked any colors,
although I’m partial to green acorns, with shimmery dragonfly wings. Except at
Halloween, when it’s an orange acorn and bat wings.

We figured participants
would want some sort of uniform, so we thought a T-shirt with the winged acorn
painted or silk screened on it would be a suitable all-purpose uniform; or if
someone was crafty enough, lapel pins or embroidered patches of winged acorns to
pin or sew onto suit jackets or polo shirts. (edited to correct a failed entry:) Or maybe even jewelry – earring,
cuff links, tie tacks, finger rings, bracelets, belt buckles. Or knitted caps
and scarves or some such. The unifying theme would be the winged acorn.

If
people wanted to wear their pearls and patches, they could sew them to a baldric
or sash, or make an over-sized Peter-Pan-style collar to sew them to, or a
tabard, or make jewelry of the pearls or beaded fringes on a shawl bearing the
patches. This would be for wearing to ceremonies where you officially recognize
the pearls and patches you’ve earned since the last time – or maybe, if we ever
have enough people who want to be WoodSpirits – at big camping jamborees or
conventions. As adults, we want something that helps tie us together while
still maintaining our own individuality, so while we would all have pearls and
patches, we’d show them off in our own ways.

Now, I also like the concept Camp
Fire had of using symbols to create personal and group names. When my children
outgrew Camp Fire, there was talk of abandoning the symbols, and browsing
through the last Camp Fire catalog I got, I don’t see the Symbols Book being
offered anymore. I don’t see any reason why we can’t do something similar –
except, we don’t have to limit it to assorted American Indian symbols. We could
use symbols from other cultures as well – particularly if our ancestors came
from the culture that originated the symbols – using a Chinese or Japanese style
crest, or Celtic knotwork, or Pennsylvania Dutch symbols, or caveman
pictoglyphs, or the European heraldic symbols. We could use that in conjunction
with the winged acorn to identify our club or ourselves – or both!

If
WoodSpirits catches on, I suppose eventually we’d need some centralized group to
organize the regional and national events. Get big enough, and we’d probably
have to comply with some government regulation – insurance and injury
liabilities spring to mind. What if someone breaks a leg at a national camp
out? My personal instinct and thought is – we’re adults. Most of us probably
have health insurance, but all those in attendance at the vent would probably
kick in to help cover co-pay and other out-of-pocket expenses related to the
injury, and the injured person wouldn’t sue the WoodSpirits. But I can’t
guarantee that everyone would behave as adults, not if the idea catches on and
there are lots of people playing – so, yeah, I suppose at some point, there’d
have to be formalized organization.

But that’s still a way in the
future.

In the meantime, paint a winged acorn on a T-shirt and go
out to have fun. If anyone asks, tell them you are with the WoodSpirits.