“Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people.” – Henry Kissinger,  1970

This is the type of future Henry Kissinger had in mind in 1970. This is not a new tactic or strategy.

Food fuels our bodies. Without the knowledge of how our bodies work we can not fully understand how food feeds our body and to what ends.    Not devoting great time and study to our Biology is a disservice to humanity, the planet and all its inhabitants! Biology should be the foundation on which all else is built and integrated into. We should begin our education by counting our feet and understanding how they work. Instead we count numbers and wonder what the numbers mean. They have  no meaning by themselves.  Our schools must reflect such awareness if we are to climb out of this darkness we have plunged!

What is Biology? Merriam-Webster defines Biology as:

Forbes says food is The World’s Largest Business.  And as those before us have known; food is the best way to control people. The ways in which our food is being controlled today is much less direct than for instance, our war to win the American west. There are no Buffalo to target this time. Now the control is much more illusive. More scientific. The human population is approaching seven billion…and everyone wants to be fed!  The World Bank puts the food and agriculture sector at 10% of global gross domestic product, which, taking the bank’s 2006 estimate of about $48 trillion, would make the sector worth about $4.8 trillion.

 ”Governments have figures for the percentage of personal-consumption expenditures that go toward food,” says David Palmer, senior food analyst at UBS(nyse: UBS - news - people ). “But if you want not just any food, but what we call packaged food, you have to define what packaged food is. Then you start to deal with the nuances of that, and you have a near impossible task.”

This ‘impossible task’; who is responsible for undertaking the nuances of what goes into our food? The population has put its trust in governments to safeguard our food. What kind of job has been and is being done? Those in power are obsessed with procuring ‘cheap food’ for the masses.  Growing food in an abundance as fast as we can, using whatever science to fertilize this obsession in order to feed an ever growing population; people are the cheapest resource of the world. Cheap food and cheap labor is the dream of the 1% controlling our world.  Encouraging population growth is essential to having a constant source of expendable and renewable energy. A type of slavery that President Polk’s administration could not have imagined when they sought to win the American West!

“For most opponents, the war to win the west was a transparent attempt to extend slavery into new territories that would become new slave states, thus ensuring that the South would control Congress and the presidency into the foreseeable future.”

- Miller Center, University of Tennessee, An american President: A Reference Resource

 ”In 1870, some U.S. government officials  promoted the destruction of the bison herds as a way to defeat their Native American enemies, who were resisting the takeover of their lands by white settlers. One Congressman, James Throckmorton of Texas, believed that “it would be a great step forward in the civilization of the Indians and the preservation of peace on the border if there was not a buffalo in existence.” Soon, military commanders were ordering their troops to kill buffalo — not for food, but to deny Native Americans their own source of food. One general believed that buffalo hunters “did more to defeat the Indian nations in a few years than soldiers did in 50.” By 1880, the slaughter was almost over. Where millions of buffalo once roamed, only a few thousand animals remained. Soon, their numbers dwindled, with the largest wild herd — just a few hundred animals — sheltered in the isolated valleys of the newly created Yellowstone National Park.” 

- Nature, American Buffalo: Spirit of a Nation

Food Manipulations: A Quick Fix for Humanity

On a much broader and bolder scale, our government and industry have developed manipulations to our food in order to control the people. Manipulation which have deathly affects to our Biology. Government and industry have neglected making biology the foundation of  our education. Our institutions have not prepared us to understand the implications of the food manipulation by science; the masses are inflicted with an inferior education; stressing reading, writing and arithmetic without biology as there foundation and  point of integration. The people of the world suffer disease and dying…and look to science for a cure! We fight not feeling good, little energy and apathy with drugs from science. We hunker down and do little to take responsibility for our condition. We chose science to develop the cures for our disease and dying; a quick fix for humanity is not what is needed.

Our bodies need a strong foundation. That foundation consists of an intricate understanding and appreciation for the geography within our bodies. When we have this understanding we learn to respect and nurture ourselves with pure and unadulterated food, we will find our bodies have the ability to heal itself.  Biology should be the foundation of our education. Reading, writing and arithmetic are inclusive.  Everything is connected. Understanding the geography of my body, and what purpose these intricacies have is essential to my understanding how everything is connected. All the religions I have studied requires we treat our bodies as some kind of temple. It took me, as I said 30 something years to understand this belief and/or concept. And now, 30 something years later, I can not imagine ever thinking differently. The condition of my temple determines what I can do or not do on this planet.

Nature’s Tide

The tide of our education must co-inside with the way of nature.  The nature of how our body works must be the foundation of our education.  Each community has to understand this as imperative to healing ourselves and the planet. Is this a difficult concept to wrap your mind around? Yes.  However, once you take time to understand what it takes to optimize our body you will understand how  the food we eat, the environment we live in impacts how our bodies function.  Once you understand; you have the power to govern like no government or industry ever will!

Look closely at the CHANGE that is ahead for all of us; the heart and soul of what life is about, not just what it looks and smells like; new doors to how we connect are opening.  ’What happens to the least of us, happens to all of us’.  Me, I’m just a ‘whimsical kid’. I keeps dreaming and discovering all the beautiful possibilities. Penny Politics works! Try it on and see how it feels!

The changes needed today will go beyond much of what we have loved and coveted. We have a couple of choices when it comes to the changes we need. We can choose to leave a bright and shiny world; full of everything healthy and beautiful; or, continue chomping away at the heals of our world, leaving a sick and fearful world. This is difficult journey; making time to study before you make a purchase. The upside: You can participate in governing this planet with every penny you spend.

As long as human beings remain fragmented and continue to disregard our connection to all that is apart of this world we breed discord, fear and discontent! We must strive to understand how our body works, how to become the ‘super beings’ we are meant to be. Embrace our congregation and keep our temple clean and healthy. Understanding our innate connection and benefit to each other. This acceptance and understanding will dissolve our discord, fear and discontent; it is our responsibility to all that is apart of this world, as stewards we are obligated to insure the highest quality of life for all.

Happy trails within!

“The livestock industry is the last wildlife-genocide program in the United States,” says Bruce Apple, the director of an Oregon-based environmental organization appropriately called Rest the West. “All-out war is declared on a diversity of species every day to benefit a single industry.” 

This ‘single industry’, the Beef Industry, is one example of how our dollars have an impact to not just the wild horses, but our health and the environment. Think differently about your purchases. Every penny you and I spend makes a political statement.  Take time to look ‘behind the name’. Understand what your purchase means to others.

Is this a difficult concept to wrap your mind around? Yes. However, once you take time to understand everything that happens behind the products we purchase and realize the power of every dollar you spend, then you can begin to govern like no government ever will!

Behind the Burger:

Our sensational appetite for Whoppers, Big Macs and Wendy’s burgers is chomping at the hills of our nation’s wild horses; people eat approximately 200 billion burgers a year! The United States has a population of a little over 307 million; “Modern plants can process 800,000 pounds of hamburger meat a day, from many thousands of different cattle”. Last year the U.S. Population Ate 26.4 Billion Pounds of Beef Cattle! And according to ‘Freakonomics, The Hidden Side of Everything’, “Our Future Looks Fat; Study Predicts Nearly Half the U.S. Population Will be Obese by 2030″.

About 45 million beef cattle roam some 870 million acres, more than two thirds of the land mass in our seventeen westernmost states. There are about 33,700 wild horses and 4,700 burros roaming on BLM ranges in 10 Western states.  The Bureau of Land Management says, if these horses were left on their own, the population would explode. Let’s see, 45 million beef cattle and 33,700 wild horses…and why is the BLM focusing on the wild horse population? Chomp! Chomp! Oh, by the way, there is a huge difference in the way cattle and horses graze.  I’m not saying to stop eating beef…just slow down! Try eating only ‘organic’ and eat less.

The changes needed today will go beyond much of what we have loved and coveted. We have a couple of choices when it comes to the changes we need. We can choose to leave a bright and shiny world; full of everything healthy and beautiful; or, continue chomping away at the heals of our world, leaving a sick and fearful world. This is difficult journey; making time to study before you make a purchase. The upside: You can participate in governing this planet with every penny you spend.

Look closely at the CHANGE that is ahead for all of us; the heart and soul of what life is about, not just what it looks and smells like; new doors to how we connect are opening. Welcome. ‘What happens to the least of us, happens to all of us’.  Me, I’m just a ‘whimsical kid’ that keeps dreaming. Penny Politics works! Try it on and see how it feels!

Happy Wild Horse Trails!

Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it.Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.
—Chief Seattle

As I sit in the sun I’m delighted to hear the flutter of  wings. My eyes revel as the birds feast. Cautious, fearful, yet determined to feed, no matter how close I come;  as long as I remain still they succumb to bravery and peck away at the bird feeder.  There are maybe a hundred or more waiting their turn at the feeder. Fluttering wings and chirping surrounds me. If I move too quickly, they flicker away. What is this invisible line of connection? Drawing them near; then frighten them away with my movement. I’m a giant in their world. Their language and pecking order are a mystery. Yet, they too are an intricate thread within the web of life.

“Is there something wrong? I’m somewhat concerned. One of the village men came and said there were stirrings of trouble in the forest. What kind of trouble? The village man said, “creatures are being killed and dying in the forest. Insects, animals and birds are struggling for life.”

- Clive Cussler, Blue Gold, a novel from the NUMA files.

Fiction? We all recognize the ‘trouble’: It’s all around us; fear is nipping at everyones’ heals.The novel brings a glimpse of one mans movement that caused the death of a pod of whales and more. He places an enormous blister on humanities face. Deliberately bringing imbalance to life and the planet.

How do we begin changing lifestyles and habits? We do it with each step we take. Until each of us acknowledges what Chief Seattle so eloquently said; ‘all things connect’, the imbalance we’ve created is killing us.  Is it our lack of education? Or is it acceptance and greed that provokes humanity to take such stupid steps? Our rampant and irresponsible development and consumption reveals our societal immaturity on an enormous scale!

Think ‘non-consumption’. Opps, that won’t work…the basis of our economy would go bust! Oh, our economy is already a bust. For me, shifting from ‘want’ to ‘need’ is the basic foundation for curing most everything that is wrong in our world. We need to tilt the scales back to when we were a ‘need based’ society. And now is the time to do it. We have become gluttonous! Starving for purpose! I heard a woman at the market say, “I want an SUV! I’m having a mid-life crisis!” Well, that pretty much sums it up. We chase after ‘things’ to fulfill ourselves. Never giving a thought about how these kinds of actions affects the world around us. Even when we are aware, we seldom go beyond the name of a thing; at the depth beneath a name.

Just as you, I yearn to have a voice. Be heard. Express what I know. Converse with friends and those I don’t know. Be understood and respected. Breath and see clearly. I have a dream: Stewardship is practiced by everyone. Each of us is a good and loving person. Each of us can take the time to ‘go beyond a name’ and become familiar with the ‘essence of life’, which is ‘biology‘; a branch of knowledge that deals with living organisms and vital processes. We will see a beautiful living thing and know how it is connected to ourselves and its environment. We will no longer lose all that we hold dear. There is a natural balance and every community thrives.

Happy non-gluttonous trails!

Rocky Mountain Trail

The following story was sent to me in an email. I am so pleased to present it here. I asked about who the author was and could not get an answer. So, if anyone knows who wrote this, I hope you will let them know that I have published their words; which are addressed to any and all those who believe the ‘boomer generation’  didn’t do enough to help the environment.

In the line at the store, the cashier told an older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment. The woman apologized to him and explained, “We didn’t have the green thing back in my day.” The clerk responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment.”

She was right — our generation didn’t have the green thing in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled.

But we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

We walked up stairs, because we didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

But she was right. We didn’t have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby’s diapers because we didn’t have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts — wind and solar power really did dry the clothes. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that old lady is right; we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana.

In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us.

When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used a wadded up old newspaper to cushion it, not a Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.

Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

But she’s right; we didn’t have the green thing back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water.

We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

But we didn’t have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service.

We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn’t need computerized gadget to receive a signal from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.

But isn’t it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn’t have the green thing back then?

Conservation isn’t just a ‘state of mind’…it’s taking a close look at where we want to go and how we want to get there.

Tightening our belts with regard to the economy also means changing many of the way we do things. If each of the 310,950,000 people in the United Stated changed one little thing with regard to conservation…what a huge difference we could make.

Happy Conservation Trails!

The title for this post was inspired by Caroline Myss, and the post was inspired by a conversation I had with a friend about my six year old friend and his niece; which led me to call another friend in Michigan; which got us on the subject of Caroline Myss and her book/YouTube video ‘Defying Gravity’.

After I got off the phone with Lynn, I went to YouTube and began watching Defying Gravity London 2009. I feel such a kinship with Caroline Myss. She confirms everything I knew from my very beginning; we are born with everything we need; but let our minds overrule our ‘grace’.

So, when I go to pick up my friend’s six year old daughter from Montessori school and ask, ‘what did you learn today?’ She says, “Nothing, I already know everything”. As strange as it may seem, I understand her answer. I remember knowing everything as well; astroplaning for example; I did it on a daily basis as a child. There were other things I knew; however, school ignored those things. Our society did not cultivate or acknowledge what we are born with; we fall way short on our development of the powers we are born with and the powerful beings we are meant to be.

As our Fossil Wars march on; and species after species become extinct; and the crumbling and burning earth becomes less and less inhabitable; and with every last molecule facing extinction; can we finally admit that our minds can not perform the healing we so desperately want?

“Either we all make it through ‘the eye of the needle’ or none of us do”.  “Humanity has to turn to ‘resources that our minds can not access’ in order to transform.” – Caroline Myss, Defying Gravity, London 2009

The ‘precision with which we have become dis functional’ is horrific! And that we are conscious and addicted to this dis functionality is even more horrific! Caroline Myss poses the questions:

“What will we use to maneuver or manipulate everybody if we are not dysfunctional? What will I use if I’m whole? The idea of becoming functional is the most frightening thing you’ve ever come across! I just don’t know about this functional stuff; what will I use if I’m whole?  Oops, there goes my weakness; I want be able to maneuver or manipulate; there goes my temper; there goes everything; I might have to go to work. Holy Christ! What will I do?”

Personally, I feel somewhat enlightened. What does that mean? Well, it’s kind of like having one foot asleep and a hip out of whack. Almost whole, but not all together yet. I want to be ‘whole’. I really, really want it. But the work to get there seems so daunting. Darn it. I have to pay attention to what I’m doing every minute of every day. Who wants to do that? I’m just like everyone else at times, I want a break; and all I want to do is have fun! I have to learn to listen to those who can lead me out of the shadow. Admit that I’ve lost much of what I knew and have to learn it all over…and that healing myself as well as the planet is a ‘daunting’ task! That I really, really, really have to want it!

“To challenge the shadow that hangs over us, you have to have a soul that can defy gravity; because your mind can’t do it!’” – Caroline Myss, Defying Gravity, London 2009

How do I get one of those? A soul that can defy gravity.

“Relying on your mind as an asset to help you heal, when in fact your mind is what needs healing; is preposterous; when the mind itself is part of the toxic waste dump; and then to turn to your mind as the instrument through which you intend to heal, when in itself is damaged goods. No, no, no, no no. Cause your mind will work to preserve it’s own woundedness. You have to go in through another door. And that other door is the door of Grace. You have to go in through a much deeper door. You need a quality of help and assistance, you need to really want to get out of your addiction to the shadow. You need to really want to become empowered in a way that is truly transformational! You need to want to transform.”

Okay, I’m psyched! I don’t have to go an organize and do a lot of research; Caroline’s got it all on tape; video, book, cassette. There is no excuse. I really, really want ‘a soul that can defy gravity’ and I’m determined to get out of my head and into the door of ‘grace’. I will get there. I know that Caroline Myss is not the only one out there saying these things…however, I very much like her delivery. No nonsense and straight to the point.

This is really exciting. If enough people had a ‘soul that can defy gravity’; if enough people got this all at once; and opened the door of grace; then ‘this world could transform in the blink of an eye!

I’m just on tape five; there are 27. Gotta go now. Stay tuned, and

Happy Graceful Trails