This article on the real tragedies relating to the financial crisis by Nick Turse is so well written that I have just appended it as is - sorry, Nick if this breaches your copyright (full contact and reading info is at the bottom).

 

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The Rising Body Count on Main Street

The Human Fallout from the Financial Crisis
By Nick Turse

On October 4, 2008, in the Porter Ranch section of Los Angeles, Karthik Rajaram, beset by financial troubles, shot his wife, mother-in-law, and three sons before turning the gun on himself. In one of his two suicide notes, Rajaram wrote that he was "broke," having incurred massive financial losses in the economic meltdown. "I understand he was unemployed, his dealings in the stock market had taken a disastrous turn for the worse," said Los Angeles Deputy Police Chief Michel R. Moore.

The fallout from the current subprime mortgage debacle and the economic one that followed has thrown lives into turmoil across the country. In recent days, the Associated Press, ABC News, and others have begun to address the burgeoning body count, especially suicides attributed to the financial crisis. (Note that, months ago, Barbara Ehrenreich raised the issue in the Nation.)

Suicide is, however, just one type of extreme act for which the financial meltdown has seemingly been the catalyst. Since the beginning of the year, stories of resistance to eviction, armed self-defense, canicide, arson, self-inflicted injury, murder, as well as suicide, especially in response to the foreclosure crisis, have bubbled up into the local news, although most reports have gone unnoticed nationally -- as has any pattern to these events.

While it's impossible to know what factors, including deeply personal ones, contribute to such extreme acts, violent or otherwise, many do seem undeniably linked to the present crisis. This is hardly surprising. Rates of stress, depression, and suicide invariably climb in times of economic turmoil. As Kathleen Hall, founder and CEO of the Stress Institute in Atlanta, told USA Today's Stephanie Armour earlier this year, "Suicides are very much tied to the economy."

With predictions of a long and deep recession now commonplace, it's not too soon to begin looking for these patterns among the human tragedies already sprouting amid the financial ruins. Troubling trends are to be expected in the years ahead, especially as hundreds of thousands of veterans of the Iraq and Afghan Wars, their families often already under enormous stress, are coming home to scenarios of joblessness and, in some cases, homelessness. Consider this, then, an attempt to look for early anecdotal signs of the fallout from hard times, the results, in this case, of a review of local press reports from across the nation, some tiny but potentially indicative of larger American tragedies, and all suggesting a pattern that is likely to grow more pronounced.

Extreme Evictions

In February, when a sheriff's deputy went to serve an eviction notice on a home owner in Greeley, Colorado, he found the man had slashed his wrists and was lying in a pool of blood. Rushed to a nearby hospital, the man survived, while the Sheriff's office tried to downplay economic reasons for the incident, saying, according to the Denver Post, that "it wasn't linking the suicide attempt to the eviction because the man had known for a week that he was to be kicked out."

In March, Ocala, Florida resident Roland Gore killed his dog and his wife, set fire to his home which was in foreclosure, and then killed himself.

In April, Robert McGuinness, a 24-year-old process server, arrived at the Marion County, Florida doorstep of Frank W. Conrad. According to an article in the local Star Banner, the 82-year-old Conrad was reportedly "cordial" at first. When McGuinness produced the foreclosure notice, however, Conrad got angry and left the room. He returned with a .38 caliber pistol and announced, "You have two seconds to get off my property or you will go to the hospital." Marion County sheriff's deputies later arrested Conrad.

On June 3rd, agents of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) set out to inform New Orleans resident Eric Minshew that he would be evicted from his "Katrina" trailer. After Minshew threatened them, the FEMA employees called the police. When they arrived, Minshew allegedly threatened them as well and "locked himself in his partially-gutted home, adjacent to his trailer." A SWAT team was called in and tear-gassed the man. Interviewed by the Times-Picayune, local resident Tiffany Flores said, "Some SWAT members told my husband they had never seen anyone withstand that much tear gas." The standoff went on for hours before "an assault team of tactical officers" invaded the home. Though Minshew opened fire, they eventually cornered him on the upper floor. When -- they claimed -- he refused to drop his weapon, they gunned him down.

That same day, in Multnomah County, Oregon, sheriff's deputies served an eviction notice on a desperate tenant. According to Deputy Travis Gullberg, the Multnomah County Sheriff's Public Information Officer, the evictee promptly pulled a gun from his pocket and pointed it at his head before being disarmed by the deputies.

Hard Times

Recently, according to the Los Angeles Times, Rich Paul, a vice president at ValueOptions Inc., which handles mental health referrals, said that over the last year stress-related calls arising from foreclosures or financial hardship had gone up 200% in California. Similarly, Dr. Mason Turner, chief of psychiatry at Kaiser Permanente's San Francisco Medical Center, reported "a fourfold increase in psychiatric admissions at his hospital during August, with roughly 60% of patients saying financial stress contributed to their problems."

Of course, many victims of the linked economic crises never receive treatment. In July, Sacramento County Sheriff's Deputy Mark Habecker told the Sacramento Bee that twice this year "homeowners about to be evicted have committed suicide as he approached to do a lockout." In another case, he said, "a fellow Sacramento deputy found a note in the home that told him where to find the foreclosed homeowner's body." The Bee reported that such cases "received no publicity when they happened," which raises the question of just how many similar suicides have gone unreported nationwide.

In July, when police delivered an eviction notice at the Middleburg, Florida home of George and Bonnie Mangum, the couple barricaded themselves inside. Eventually, George Mangum was talked into surrendering and was arrested. "He did the only thing he knew to do, protect his family, all he did was sit on the other side of the door and say I have a gun, I have a gun and that's why he's going to jail because he threatened the police," said Bonnie. The couple's daughter Robin added, "This is my home, this is all our home and I don't think it's right. My dad was a Green Beret, he's sick, how are you going to kick him out?"

Pinellas Park, Florida resident Dallas Dwayne Carter was a 44-year-old disabled, single dad who lost his job, fell into debt, and was faced with eviction. "He always talked about needing help -- financially and help with the kids," neighbor Kevin Luster told the St. Petersburg Times. On July 19th, Carter apparently called the police to say he was armed and disturbed. When they arrived, Carter fired his pistol and rifle inside the apartment, before emerging and pointing his weapons at the officers on the scene. Police say they ordered him to drop them. When he didn't, they killed him in a 10-round fusillade.

On July 23d, about 90 minutes before her foreclosed Taunton, Massachusetts home was scheduled to be sold at auction, Carlene Balderrama faxed a letter to her mortgage company, letting them know that "by the time they foreclosed on the house today she'd be dead." She continued, "I hope you're more compassionate with my husband and son than you were with me." After that, she took a high-powered rifle and, according to the Boston Globe, shot herself. In an interview with the Associated Press, Balderrama's husband John said, "I had no clue." His wife handled the finances and had been intercepting letters from the mortgage company for months. "She put in her suicide note that it got overwhelming for her," he said. In the letter, she wrote, "take the [life] insurance money and pay for the house."

The day after Balderrama took her life, 50 miles away in Worcester, Massachusetts, a 64-year-old man, who had already been evicted, barricaded himself inside his former home. Police were called to the scene to find him reportedly prepared to ignite four propane tanks. "His intention was to burn the house down with him in it," Sgt. Christopher J. George told the Telegram & Gazette. With the man becoming "even more despondent" as "a moving van arrived on the street," police stormed the house to find him "holding a foot-long knife to his own chest" as a piece of paper burned near the propane. The man was disarmed and the fire extinguished.

That very same day, in Visalia, California, a Tulare County sheriff's deputy tried to serve an eviction notice to Melvin Nicks, 50. Nicks responded by stabbing the deputy with a knife and barricading himself in the house for several hours. He later surrendered.

No Way Out

Bay City, Michigan residents David and Sharron Hetzel, both 56, "lost their home to foreclosure and filed for bankruptcy protection. But they did not follow through with the Chapter 13 proceedings." On August 1st, say police reports, David Hetzel mailed a letter of apology to his family members. Later that night, according to the local police, he attacked his sleeping wife, striking her in the head with a golf club and repeatedly stabbing her with a kitchen knife. After that, he began setting fires throughout the house before crawling into bed beside his wife and killing himself with "a single, fatal wound to his torso."

On August 12th, sheriff's deputies arrived at the Saddlebrook, New Jersey home of 88-year-old Beatrice Brennan, another victim of the mortgage crisis, who had refinanced her home and fallen behind on payments. Refusing to stand idly by while his mother was put out on the street, her 60-year-old son John pulled a .22 caliber handgun on the lawmen. That sent the movers, waiting for a court-imposed 10 a.m. deadline, scurrying for their van. Brennan was able to delay the eviction briefly before a SWAT team arrested him and his mother lost her home. "I'm heartbroken over this," Vincent Carabello, a longtime neighbor, told the local paper, the Record. "How could this happen?"

Roseville, Minnesota resident Sylvia Sieferman was under a great deal of stress and beset by financial difficulties. She worried about how she would care for her two 11-year-old daughters. On August 21st, according to police reports, Sieferman "repeatedly stabbed the girls and herself." "She reached her limit," her friend Carrie Micko told the Star Tribune. "She couldn't cope anymore… she felt that her daughters were suffering because she was failing to provide for them." As Micko further explained, "After a series of financial mishaps, she just couldn't see her way through. She was under extreme financial, emotional and spiritual distress and didn't want to fail them."

By Any Means Necessary

The Boston Globe reported that, on September 5th, "[f]our protesters trying to prevent the eviction of a Roxbury woman from her home were arrested… after they chained themselves to the steps of her back porch." As 40 protesters chanted in the street, officials from Bank of America ordered Paula Taylor out of her house. "This is our eighth blockade and the first time there have been arrests," said Soledad Lawrence, an organizer with City Life, a non-profit organization seeking to halt the large numbers of foreclosures and evictions in Boston neighborhoods. "They can be more aggressive and we'll be more aggressive," she added.

On September 25th, as politicians in Washington tried to hash out a massive bailout package for financial institutions, six Boston police officers confronted about 40 City Life activists in front of the home of Ana Esquivel, a public school employee, and her husband Raul, a construction worker, both in their fifties. The Globe reported that four protesters were arrested as police shoved their way through in order to allow a locksmith into the house to bar the Esquivels from their home. "We've been destroyed by the bank," Ana Esquivel said, sobbing. "The bank is too big for us." While the Esquivel blockade failed, Steven Meacham, a City Life organizer, told a Globe reporter that "the protests have helped to stop about nine evictions. In the successful blockades, the homeowners were given additional time by their mortgage holders to negotiate alternatives to foreclosure."

Two days earlier, Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies came to the Monrovia home of 53-year-old Joanne Carter and her 67-year-old husband John to serve an eviction notice. Joanne Carter refused to accept it. According to "Monrovia spokesman" Dick Singer, as reported in the Pasadena Star-News, she "told deputies she had guns in the house and showed them a shotgun." The next day, Monrovia police officers showed up at the home after being informed that the woman "may have made threats to a workers compensation agency." Police Lieutenant Michael Lee said that Carter told them if they "tried to come in, she would defend her house at any means necessary." She and her husband then reportedly barricaded themselves inside, after which a shotgun was fired. Police from other local departments were called in. Following an hours-long standoff, the Carters surrendered and were arrested.

That same day, in northern California, Cliff Kendall, Petaluma's chief building official, shot himself with a rifle. A week earlier, Kendall had learned that he was being laid off. "He was afraid we'd lose our home, and we probably will because I can't afford to keep it," his wife Patricia, who is on disability with a back injury, told the Press Democrat. "He was extremely upset about it and hurt."

On October 3rd, the day before Karthik Rajaram's mass murder/suicide in Los Angeles, 90-year-old Addie Polk was driven to extremes by the financial crisis. With sheriff's deputies at the door, Polk evidently took the only measure she felt was left to her to avoid eviction from her foreclosed home. She tried to kill herself. Her neighbor Robert Dillon, hearing loud noises from her home, used a ladder to enter the second floor window. He found Polk lying on her bed. "Then she kind of moved toward me a little and I saw that blood, and I said, 'Oh, no. Miss Polk musta done shot herself.'" While she was in the hospital recovering from two self-inflicted gunshot wounds, Fannie Mae spokesman Brian Faith announced the mortgage association had decided to forgive her outstanding debt and give her the house "outright."

On October 6th, in Sevier County, Tennessee, sheriff's deputies, with police in tow, arrived to evict Jimmy and Pamela Ross from their home. They heard a shot and entered the home to find 57-year-old Pamela dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest. Neighbor Ruth Blakey told WVLT-TV, "I know she really hated to leave that house. She did not want to leave that house."

Wanda Dunn told neighbors she would rather die than leave her home. On October 13th, the day she was to be evicted, the 53-year-old Pasadena, California native apparently set fire to the home "where her family had lived for generations" before shooting herself in the head. "We knew it was going to happen," neighbor Steve Brooks told the Los Angeles Times. "It was nobody's fault; it was everybody's fault."

Outsourcing Suicide

In September, readers at Slate's "Explainer" column asked the following question: If the financial crisis was so dire, "how come we aren't hearing about executives jumping out of windows?" Writer Nina Shen Rastogi dutifully answered:

"Because the current situation hasn't had nearly as devastating an effect on people's personal finances. The Great Crash of 1929 -- and, to a lesser extent, the crash of 1987 -- did lead some people to commit suicide. But in nearly all of those cases, the deceased had suffered a major loss when the market collapsed. Now, due in large part to those earlier experiences, investors tend to keep their portfolios far more diversified, so as to avoid having their entire fortunes wiped out when stocks take a downturn."

Perhaps this is true. So far, at least, Wall Street's suicides seem to have been outsourced to places that its executives have probably never heard of. There, on the proverbial main streets of America, the Street's financial meltdown is beginning to be measured not only in dollars and cents, but in blood.

Right now, there are no real counts of the many extreme acts born of the financial crisis, but assuredly other murders, suicides, self-inflicted injuries, acts of arson and of armed self-defense have simply gone unnoticed outside of economically hard-hit neighborhoods in cities and small towns across America. With no end in sight for either the foreclosures or the economic turmoil, Americans may have to brace themselves for many more casualties on the home front. Unless extreme economic steps, like mortgage- and debt-forgiveness, are implemented, the number of extreme acts and the ultimate body count may be far more extreme than anyone yet wants to contemplate.

Nick Turse is the associate editor and research director of Tomdispatch.com. His work has appeared in many publications, including the Los Angeles Times, Le Monde Diplomatique (German edition), Adbusters, the Nation, and regularly at Tomdispatch.com. His first book, The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives, an exploration of the new military-corporate complex in America, was recently published by Metropolitan Books. His website is Nick Turse.com.

Copyright 2008 Nick Turse

 

I've just received this quiz which only takes a few minutes to read. I doubt that anyone can answer correctly the questions, and I guess that most people wouldn't even be able to manage a guess for most of them. I'm sure that none of the political candidates would do very well, which is a shame as these questions represent the real issues that we should be worried about - as well as some that are in the public eye...

Peace,

White Feather

Twenty things we should know about the US and the world
A social justice quiz
Bill Quigley (2008-09-22)
http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/panafrican/50695

How many of the following 20 social justice questions can you answer...correctly?

Social justice, as defined by John Rawls, respects basic individual liberty and economic improvement. But social justice also insists that liberty, opportunity, income, wealth and the other social bases of self-respect are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution is to everyone's advantage and any inequalities are arranged so they are open to all. Therefore, we must educate ourselves and others about how liberty, opportunity, income and wealth are actually distributed in our country and in our world.

1. How many deaths are there world-wide each year due to acts of terrorism?

2. How many deaths are there world-wide each day due to poverty and malnutrition?

3. 1n 1965, CEOs in major companies made 24 times more than the average worker. In 1980, CEOs made 40 times more than the average worker. In 2007, CEOs earned how many times more than the average worker?

4. In how many of the over 3000 cities and counties in the US can a full-time worker who earns minimum wage afford to pay rent and utilities on a one-bedroom apartment?

5. In 1968, the minimum wage was $1.65 per hour. How much would the minimum wage be today if it had kept pace with inflation since 1968?

6. True or false? People in the United States spend nearly twice as much on pet food as the US government spends on aid to help foreign countries.

7. How many people in the world live on $2 a day or less?

8. How many people in the world do not have electricity?

9. People in the US consume 42 kilograms of meat per person per year. How much meat and grain do people in India and China eat?

10. How many cars does China have for every 1000 drivers? India? The U.S.?

 

11. How much grain is needed to fill a SUV tank with ethanol?

12. According to the Wall Street Journal, the richest 1% of Americans earns what percent of the nation's adjusted gross income? 5%? 10%? 15%? 20%?

13. How many people does our government say are homeless in the US on any given day?

14. What percentage of people in homeless shelters are children?

15. How many veterans are homeless on any given night?

16. The military budget of the United States in 2008 is the largest in the world at $623 billion per year. How much larger is the US military budget than that of China, the second largest in the world?

17. The US military budget is larger than how many of the countries of the rest of the world combined?

18. Over the 28 year history of the Berlin Wall, 287 people perished trying to cross it. How many people have died in the last 4 years trying to cross the border between Arizona and Mexico?

19. India is ranked second in the world in gun ownership with 4 guns per 100 people. China is third with 3 firearms per 100 people. Which country is first and how many guns do they own?

20. What country leads the world in the incarceration of its citizens?
Answers to Social Justice Quiz 2008

1. 22,000. The U.S. State Department reported there were more than 22,000 deaths from terrorism last year. Over half of those killed or injured were Muslims. Source: Voice of America, May 2, 2008. "Terrorism Deaths Rose in 2007."

2. About 25,000 people die every day of hunger or hunger-related causes, according to the United Nations. Poverty.com - Hunger and World Poverty. Every day, almost 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes - one child every five seconds. Bread for the World. Hunger Facts: International.

3. Today's average CEO from a Fortune 500 company makes 364 times an average worker's pay and over 70 times the pay of a four-star Army general. Executive Excess 2007, page 7, jointly published by Institute for Policy Studies and United for Fair Economy, August 29, 2007. 1965 numbers from State of Working America 2004-2005, Economic Policy Institute.

4. In no city or county in the entire USA can a full-time worker who earns minimum wage afford even a one bedroom rental. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) urges renters not to pay more than 30% of their income in rent. HUD also reports the fair market rent for each of the counties and cities in the US. Nationally, in order to rent a 2 bedroom apartment, one full-time worker in 2008 must earn $17.32 per hour. In fact, 81% of renters live in cities where the Fair Market Rent for a two bedroom rental is not even affordable with two minimum wage jobs. Source: Out of Reach 2007-2008, April 7, 2008, National Low-Income Housing Coalition.

5. Calculated in real (inflation adjusted) dollars, the 1968 minimum wage would have been worth $9.83 in 2007 dollars. Andrew Tobias, January 16, 2008. The federal minimum wage is $6.55 per hour effective July 24, 2008 and $7.25 per hour effective July 24, 2009.

6. True. The USA spends $43.4 billion on pet food annually. Source: American Pet Products Manufacturers Association, Inc. The USA spent $23.5 billion in official foreign aid in 2006. The government of the USA gave the most of any country in the world in actual dollars. As a percentage of gross national income, the USA came in second to last among OECD donor countries and ranked number 20 at 0.18 percent behind Sweden at 1.02 percent and other countries such as Norway, Netherlands, Ireland, United Kingdom, Austria, France, Germany, Spain, Canada, New Zealand, Japan and others. This does not count private donations which, if included, may move the USA up as high as 6th. The Index of Global Philanthropy 2008, page 15, 19.

7. The World Bank reported in August 2008 that 2.6 billion people consume less than $2 a day.

8. World-wide, 1.6 billion people do not have electricity. 2.5 billion people use wood, charcoal or animal dung for cooking. United Nations Human Development Report 2007/2008, pages 44-45.

9. People in the US lead the world in meat consumption at 42 kg per person per year compared to 1.6 kg in India and 5.9 kg in China. People in the US consume five times the grain (wheat, rice, rye, barley, etc.) as people in India, three times as much as people in China, and twice as much as people in Europe. "THE BLAME GAME: Who is behind the world food price crisis," Oakland Institute, July 2008.

10. China has 9 cars for every 1000 drivers. India has 11 cars for every 1000 drivers. The US has 1114 cars for every 1000 drivers. Iain Carson and Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran, Zoom: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future (2007).

11. The grain needed to fill up a SUV tank with ethanol could feed a hungry person for a year. Lester Brown, CNN.Money.com, August 16, 2006

12. "According to the figures, the richest 1% reported 22% of the nation's total adjusted gross income in 2006. That is up from 21.2% a year earlier, and is the highest in the 19 years that the IRS has kept strictly comparable figures. The 1988 level was 15.2%. Earlier IRS data show the last year the share of income belonging to the top 1% was at such a high level as it was in 2006 was in 1929, but changes in measuring income make a precise comparison difficult." Jesse Drucker, "Richest Americans See Their Income Share Grow," Wall Street Journal, July 23, 2008, page A3.

13. 754,000 are homeless. About 338,000 homeless people are not in shelters (live on the streets, in cars, or in abandoned buildings) and 415,000 are in shelters on any given night. 2007 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Annual Homeless Report to Congress, page iii and 23. The population of San Francisco is about 739,000.

14. HUD reports nearly 1 in 4 people in homeless shelters are children 17 or younger. Page iv - 2007 HUD Annual Homeless Report to Congress.

15. Over 100,000 veterans are homeless on any given night. About 18 percent of the adult homeless population is veterans. Page 32, 2007 HUD Homeless Report. This is about the same population as Green Bay Wisconsin.

16. Ten times. China's military budget is $65 billion. The US military budget is nearly 10 times larger than the second leading military spender. GlobalSecurity.org

17. The US military budget of $623 billion is larger than the budgets of all the countries in the rest of the world put together. The total global military budget of the rest of the world is $500 billion. Russia's military budget is $50 billion, South Korea's is $21 billion, and Iran's is $4.3 billion. GlobalSecurity.org

18. 1268. At least 1268 people have died along the border of Arizona and Mexico since 2004. The Arizona Daily Star keeps track of the reported deaths along the state border and reports 214 died in 2004, 241 in 2005, 216 in 2006, 237 in 2007, and 116 as of July 31, 2008. These numbers do not include the deaths along the California or Texas border. The Border Patrol reported that 400 people died in fiscal 2206-2007, 453 died in 2004-2005, and 494 died in 2004-2005. Source Associated Press, November 8, 2007.

19. The US is first in gun ownership world-wide with 90 guns for every 100 citizens. Laura MacInnis, "US most armed country with 90 guns per 100 people." Reuters, August 28, 2007.

20. The US jails 751 inmates per 100,000 people, the highest rate in the world. Russia is second with 627 per 100,000. England's rate is 151, Germany is 88, and Japan is 63. The US has 2.3 million people behind bars, more than any country in the world. Adam Liptak, "Inmate Count in US Dwarfs Other Nations," NYT, April 23, 2008.


* Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. This quiz first appeared at www.countercurrents.org

 

 

Nothing to do with much really, but a few weeks or months ago, time is passing too fast to know, the Australian prime minister apologised to the Aborigine "lost children" - those children who were forcibly taken from their families so they could be integrated into "proper" Australain families, children who never knew about the Dreaming, of the serpent gods or the creation myths of their people who had spent at least 40, maybe 60-70,000 years in their land. The Aussie govt apologised. This is a start, and perhaps they'll now get to thinking about how to give back what they took. Little by little, a more equal world can be remade. Then if New Zealand, Canada and the US honour their agreements that all land taken by force or by tricky means, perhaps the ancient peoples will have something to live for again.

But that's another story. Late last year, I had a vision. It started with rising seas and storms. And in one moment, Rotterdam, in Holland, became submerged by the uncontrolled seas. It was very bizarre for me because even though I'm European, I know nothing about Rotterdam. What I saw was a landscape covered with oil - perhaps refineries, ships. OK, Rotterdam is a port, but why did I see this flooding and oil everywhere? Talking to a Dutch friend afterwards, he explained that all around Rotterdam are refineries and that it's one of the major entry points for oil into Europe by sea...

Then the image changed and the sea itself became black, covered with oil. I heard war sirens, like those that rang out over London in the world wars. Then the oil burst into flames and I saw a man who resembled Bin Laden, but his face was a mixture of Arabic, Jewish, White, Chinese - it was everything. This man put the first flame to the oil. It is the beginning of the rout of mankind. In fact, the whole scene was like an image of Hades.

Then my guides told me not to worry about the first vision as this would be a few years away. And not to worry about the second vision, as this would come afterwards, but both would come about before we are supposed to do something serious about global warming (2020)... very comforted, I asked for another vision, and was hoping for something more comforting. Instead, I saw waves and wind hammer a small Asian coastline, the people and the animals thrown around like leaves in a tempest. All the while, there was an army gereral saying something like, "don't worry, everything will be all right, go back to your homes and stay inside". While he was saying this, the homes were levelled by the power of the sea. My guides told me this would happen around Beltane. Clearly, it is what is going on in Burma right now.

I want to follow the lead of the Australian PM and apologise to the Burmese people. To apologise for everything that I've done that has contributed to creating a situation of changing climate. The two million miles I flew in planes, the fast cars, the Suburban, always wanting more things, better and less expensive, the huge house running the A/C all the time... I know it's not much, but I'm sorry for what I've personally done that has directly resulted in the deaths of probably 70,000 people before we're done in Burma, this time. And I know that there will be more storms, more tidal waves, and perhaps millions who will die in the low-lying deltas of India, Bangladesh, Burma and so on...

I know I only contributed a tiny bit, and I know that I've renounced that life, but it's still hard to accept. And it's hard not to think "if only we had done things differently, earlier"...

I hope we change. Burma, I'm sorry.

Hi everyone,

This is very raw, and other than a working title of The Shaman, nothing to do with paganism :-)     - but would it make you want to read more? It's an idea for a book that I've been mulling around for quite a while now, and I think the time is becoming ripe... and yes, ultimately, the finished idea would have a lot to do with paganism!

 

 

Today was a good day. The evening before, I'd watched the Lunar Module land on the moon. I'd waited all of my short life to see this happen, and I unashamedly cried. Then, after a fitful night's sleep, I'd rushed downstairs to turn on the television for the news. Despite Apollo 11 orbiting the moon, a quarter of a million miles away, this was no mean feat in my grandparents' house: first it was always a challenge to see if the electricity was stable enough to heat the television tubes, and then someone had to hold the aerial and often perform complex gymnastics in order to receive a signal that could be transformed into a snowy black and white image still enough to watch. Everything had cooperated. The TV had started with the first click of the switch, and I'd not even needed to move the aerial from its perch on the mantel piece above the unlit coal fire. That morning, not even the musty, dirty smell of a century of dead fires, that always lingered in the room, bothered me. Half way through my bowl of cornflakes, the news came on. Almost immediately, blurry image of the ladder leading down from the Lunar Module filled the screen, and Neil Armstrong descended onto the surface of the moon. Moments later, after being warned about the last step, a good "three footer", Buzz Adrin joined him, saying ""Beautiful. Beautiful. Magnificent desolation". It had happened some four hours earlier, but for me, it was as good as live: I was there with them.

 

Yes, today was a good day. And now, after an hour's climb in the cool sunshine of the early morning, damp from the dew still painting an iridescent sheen on the grassy verges of the mountain, I was sitting on a stile, at my favourite spot on the Earth, the highest point in Glamorgan, and from where I could see forever. Or almost. And from this vantage point, I imagined a future more glorious than anything humanity had ever known, for if we could walk on the moon, what next? I had tons of ideas. I had tons of ideals, too. I had my own thoughts on how to be, what my family would be like; a good job that would allow me to break free from the shackles of generations of miners and pass through the distant horizon that was still indistinct in the morning haze. That would even take me to explore other parts of the universe, far from here. Ideals that would justify the greatness of man. Little did I realise that ideals, left long enough, become dreams, and dreams become buried at the ends of rainbows, so that no matter how far or long one searches, they are always just out of reach. And at that tender age of 11, reflecting alone on that Welsh mountain, I didn't for one moment contemplate that when there are enough collective ideals and collective dreams, all colliding with each other, that a rainbow could suddenly dissolve into a beautiful, magnificent desolation.

Thanks to everyone who responded to my questions about sight.

This intrigued me because I'm in the process of trying to understand what people do and why, especially as relates to the environment (as many of you have figured out by now)! In these studies I've come to realise that I need to try to understand people's relationships with the environment and other people not through my eyes but through their eyes. Except that some people rely on their hearing! Or their touch. This was what got me thinking... Anyway, your replies confirm what I'd learned from others, especially, of course, as Morning Rain says, how can we even begin to imagine not having all our senses - they all add so much! Like Morning Rain, I've had a few close calls. I also thought I was going to lose the sense of touch in my left hand due to a small fight with an angle grinder (it won), but in fact, I've recovered most of it. This was very worrisome for me as above all else, I'm a musician: I love playing blues and folk music. Nevertheless, five years later, I play less and less because I have the beginnings of an arthritis that slow me down a lot - so I'm very thankful for such wonderful guitarists as "Old Slow Hand" (Eric Clapton for those who don't know), and B. B. King, who proves that a few, brilliantly chosen notes can make a world of a difference. For these reasons, if I had to lose a sense, I would pray that it not be my hearing...

So, not to wish that any of us lose any of the senses, this is what I learned...

Despite being the most ‘popular', sight was the least elaborated, tending towards perceptions that it's absence inhibits one's capacity to function.

Jane, an 82 year old widow, close to the end of a long struggle with lung cancer, chooses sight, which is, for her, essential for communication: "If it were my last sense, I could still give and receive little notes", she says. This aspect of communicative dialogue extends to being able to see the faces of friends, the ocean, trees, or a blue jay looking for food. Without this communication, she would miss more that half "the pleasure of life".

"Reach out, and what you get is more honest that what you see", was an insightful justification for touch. More surprisingly, Sara, a Norwegian painter reflects that without being able to feel the canvas, brushes and paints, she could not be an artist. She often paints with her eyes closed, "to free myself from what I think I see as opposed to what is really there".  

Isabelle, a French teacher, considers the spoken word to be the "soul of society". "If you listen very carefully, the voice cannot deceive", she says. There is a sense of the sacred in sound. We connect with sounds to understand ourselves; we are both a resonance with, and reflection of, these sounds. A Gregorian chant ‘elevates' us to the divine when we open ourselves to its myriad subtle harmonics, she argues. The darkness of a monastery is not to minimise the sense of sight, but to invite us into a total immersion of silence and sound, the sense of the divine, where sound becomes a healing energy, its low frequencies harmonising with the natural vibration of the Earth. "Sound is the heartbeat of the Earth".

Heather, a florist, says that smell immediately "conjures a mental picture... as good as any of the other [senses]". She thinks this is "strange"; perhaps not. It is the smell of the flower, not the shape or colour, which instantly connects her with it. She can work in her garden even with her eyes closed and still smell the divine connection to the earth and what it sustains.

None of our senses provide the whole story: it is through the combination of senses that we construct our environment and our dialogue with it. We experience a multiplicity of realities, different for each of us, yet all equally true; just as I cannot possibly feel an emotion in the same way as someone else, I cannot sense something in the same way. To understand someone's preferred or expressed reliance on a particular sense is to understand that individual's personal connection with what gives him, or her, reason to live. While each sense lacks a total coherence, combined as they are within the human entity, they create a dialogue, true and real. This is how we ‘see' the pain of a fallen tree, ‘hear' the cry of a ravaged Earth, ‘smell' the violence of sufferance, ‘taste' fear... or even ‘touch' the divine.

 

Peace