A few days ago, a friend sent a link about voting for the White House Farmer.  I thought, for a moment, that the only thing in question was which organic farmer was going to be chosen.  - And what an amazing reaction I had!  Tears ran down my face, even as I researched and discovered that it was still only an idea (though a VERY good one!)

I spent a chunk of my childhood close to Washington, D.C., in nearby Maryland, where I went on the White House tour with my grade school class.  To imagine THAT girl (me!) seeing a gorgeous garden of produce, growing right there on Pennsylvania Ave….

Our mothers, in the ’50s and  ’60s, valued canned peas and frozen carrots and “instant” potatoes and powdered milk  (they were new-fangled).  Not a mother I knew growing up had food she picked for dinner.  That was old-fashioned, growing things. I was so unused to home garden produce that, in one of our military “home” incarnations, my mother grew mint on the side of the house, and I found that quite exotic and wonderful.

What a potent message it would be for hordes of school children to see Obama Organics during their tour!  Children hear us blather about what we believe we’re all about, what we’d like to believe our values to be.  But they SEE what we DO.  Having an organic garden on the White House lawn would be the biggest statement of our TRUE values that we could possibly make to the children.  (They understand food so much better than they do fuel, banking, and the like!)

• It would say to them that food is more important than lawns (it IS);
• that healthy soil, the soil that grows our food, is of concern to us all, ALL the way up to the top; and
• that small scale, organic farming is not a thing of the past, but is having a resurgence with this resurgence publicly on display for tourists with cameras, who though they may not speak English, will need no translated signs to show them what that garden really means.

Thanks to Michael Pollan, whose idea which has inspired so many…

Sometimes change is a good thing.

While talking with a dear friend of mine, I discovered that this 82-yr.-old had lived through some serious changes.  And not the kind you might automatically image.  You might be imagining the loss of innocence, the loss of a simple life.  No, in this case, the direction is quite the opposite.

Looking at this gentle man, I watched as he told a story of having to kill his pet golden retriever’s puppies - all healthy, all 13 of them.  How brutal that sounds to me today!  As a 12-yr-old, it was the norm, what any struggling farm family would have done, he said.  This was confirmed by two elder friends, who nodded, listening, unshocked.   Yet today, my friend had tears on the brims of his eyes as he told the tale of blowing the life right out of these gorgeous pups.

“i will never again kill a dog,” he proclaimed, his Adam’s apple moving with emotion.  Mores and values are different today, and not always in a bad way.

HERE”S ANOTHER ONE for you:

When I lived in Ashland, Oregon, a year came and went which saw the population - and property values - grossly altered by serious earthquakes in California.  Up came the retirees, with their inflated pensions and savings, altering forever the landscape, and to some degree, the lifestyle, of this spectacular and special town.  Complaining about the changes became common conversation, but I couldn’t help but remember that the KKK once paraded down the main street of a VERY different Ashland, one that we wouldn’t have wanted to live in.

And it’s all CHANGES.

It’s easy with the recent purging of B!sh and Ch*#ney to think that we always are open to, and appreciate the possibilities of change.  But we don’t.

Sometimes it takes perspective.

This past October / November, I had approximately 3 weeks of steady bliss.  It seemed no matter what happened (or didn’t happen), I went to sleep blissful, woke up blissful, and noticed during the day a constant calm, a due-to-nothing joy.  It occurred to me then that Mona Lisa’s smile may have been one of silent, pervasive bliss.

It would certainly explain our fascination with her.  “She has a secret”, they say.  Perhaps it’s the secret of lasting contentment and peace, the secret of inner bliss.  I’ve been the keeper of that secret before - for a few days, for a week, for two… And every time, I’ve thought - and hoped! - that maybe this time it would be permanent.  When you’re “there”, it feels so familiar, so right.  It becomes hard to imagine the pain of losing it yet again.  Enlightenment, after all, is normal.

Well, Mona Lisa’s smile has come and gone, yet again.  December’s stresses, some of which I’m now rebounding from, make my recent weeks of unbending bliss seem rather distant.  But I know that they’re not.  Mona Lisa’s still smiling silently on my inside, and someday she’ll be my permanent exterior, a result of my permanent experience.  I won’t hold my breath for that, of course, and neither will you.  We’ll proceed as best we can, accepting what is before us, accepting what is true.  Someday that truth will be unchanging.  For today, it is not.