Just came back from a trip to Ell-ay and SF Bay. Back home to Mexico. Undisputed – the US has some amazing, wonderful aspects. People consider where we live in Puerto Vallarta paradise, and I often feel that way as well, but the U.S. has its own versions of paradise and Cali has more than her fair share.

Still, I came back confused about tons of stuff from the US. Life seems so hard right now and almost everyone appears confused, anxious or depressed. Logic notwithstanding, people desperately cling to a sense of entitlement that is peculiar to America and feels totally outdated to me. It’s a subtext that says no matter what, this is the greatest place on earth. We are so bound up looking at other places and declaring them less than, that it stops us from looking in a mirror.

Looking from the outside in, I see a  nation refusing to accept that it may be no worse but is in fact no better than other countries. I feel that deep-seated mythology even from my progressive friends who have many criticisms of the US. It’s still a subtext that gets in the way of self-examination.  From where I stand, I see a nation without mirrors.

Mention corruption to a Mexican and you’ll likely get a sympathetic response about how terrible it is here. Or poverty, problems with the school system, cronyism, etc. You get agreement without shame, confusion or defensiveness.  The national ego is not built on being the best country on earth.

Mention the cultural depths reaching back millenia, strong family ties, the comforts of life here, or the delicious food and you get enthusiastic agreement. People here have pride of place and country as much as Americans, and love their place of birth no less. By way of strong contrast with the States however, national pride is constructed without comparison to other places.

What I keep wondering is why we can’t do the same. We have mega corruption — assuming we agree that corporate power and vested interests should not have a place in government. We have more poverty now than at almost any time in the past hundred years. We are constrained by a constitution that was conceived in an agrarian nation of the 1770′s and in many respects is irrelevant to respond to today’s challenges. We have humongous problems with health care, education, traffic (OMG! Ell-ay really is off the charts!), random violence, prisons. I could go on – not because America has more problems than other places, but because it’s my country and I know it well.

In discussions, both personal and national, even gentle critiques are often defended with absurd comparisons — “At least here we can express our opinion and not end up in jail like in xxx.” “You think there’s poverty here? What about yyy.” Women, violence… it’s all the same. The absurd part is that the country is never (and I mean never) a comparable western industrialized nation where we won’t come out on top in any of those areas. It’s usually a country we’ve stereotyped anyway, but it’s always a country in an entirely different stage of socio-economic development.

Why bother? Why not wo/man up and move on. It’s all rationalizations that fuel outdated mythologies and that holds us back. We could avoid a lot of verbal exhaust fumes if we found a national mirror that could give us a relatively objective 2012 appraisal.

We would get a lot further with in-depth discussions on solutions if we dumped the stifling and ridiculous mantras that the US is the best country in the world, the greatest democracy on earth, and we’re luckier than anyone else on the planet.

Hogwash. Double think.

America doesn’t need to be defended against its own condition. Like every country, it is well-loved by its citizenry. It has blemishes like every place and it just might be a hell of a lot easier to fix problems if we owned up and focused on solutions.

If you had one message for the world, what would it be?

If you did one activity, what would it be?

If you focused on one solution, what would it be?

My one message?
In 1995, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton’s words electrified the 4th UN Conference on Women in Beijing. In a speech ranked 35th of the top 100 of the 20th Century she told the world that “Women’s rights are human rights.”
This Earth Day, I will add this. Planetary rights are human rights.

Our blind violation of the biosphere that supports life is a one-way street to human destruction. For millions of years our planet supported a myriad of species, thank you very much. We newcomers that came along a mere few hundred thousand years ago, we are the ones that require a delicate balance to survive. Our planet is vastly more robust than our species. Until we replace dominion delusions with simple stewardship we will continue to deny our own human rights.

My activity?
I live in a town that has fingers in the mountains and toes in the ocean. I could go to either place today, but my choice this year is the ocean. I’ll toss some beach garbage in a trash can and wish people I meet ‘Happy Earth Day.’ Ocean. Source of wonder. Source of life.

My single solution?
Awareness-building. Most of my career was in public information and often I wondered what on Earth it took to change people’s minds. I learned the pitiful weakness of facts, logic, data and information in the face of strongly held beliefs and personal myths.
My individual solution is to create stories that touch universal desires — an attempt to nudge a change of heart. Change the heart and the mind will follow.

As an issue, for now I pick saving the seas – acidification, overfishing, garbage… As goes the ocean, so does life.

So those are mine, for today. I figure we can dig in anywhere, personal preference ergo no wrong answers. The only error, and it’s a costly one in my opinion, is to have no answers. So I’ll shut up and let you get to yours — and if that’s tomorrow that’s okay too. Every day is Earth Day.

But I agree with the bazillion fb users out there, of which I am a mere 1, that there ARE a lot of good uses for fb. Case in point: Amazing  true story of Jacob Boehm, 22-year old Stanford music student who wandered off while traveling alone in Malaysia. Family & friends panicked when they lost all contact for six days. His parents in California created a fb page asking if anybody had seen him. Within 24 hours he was found on a remote jungle hike where there was no cell phone reception. If you were to map what happened, the connections criss-crossed the globe as fast as only cyberspace can carry. The Borg side of fb!

NOT included in good uses is the amount of time I waste cruising through fb stuff. I know I’m not alone, but OK, that’s personal time-wasting choice. What tops my list of WTH?Why-didn’t-you-use-your-brain-before-posting? are the unintended consequences of re-posting.

First I’ll say it’s already a peeve of mine when otherwise really nice people ask me to ‘post this as your status.’ What if I don’t want to re-post it — for reasons legit or other? At a minimum I am not a nice person. More likely I obviously don’t give a shit about kids with cancer, the environment, or the latest tragedy somewhere. Likely I should rot in hell for my unadulterated shortsighted selfish behavior. Do I judge too harshly? Perhaps a tad.

But consider this, if I like apost  and want to re-post it I will — all on my own. Maybe it reminds me of the chain e-letters and their antecedents via snail mail that openly threaten life, limb and one’s first born. But fb is more insidious. It carries behind it the weight of unspoken but public humiliation. Seriously, what kind of person ARE YOU???

Anyway, that’s not what tops my list either. It’s this.

Let’s say you happen to be an ecologist, democrat, foreigner, or welfare recipient. Someone posts something so odious, so utterly heinous, so downright stupid, selfish or mean-spirited that your ‘oh no you don’t’ juices start cascading in waterfalls. Sooooo you re-post it to let loose your wrath, intelligent counter-position or righteous outrage. Fine — except for the unintended consequence.  If it’s an outrage for you it’s likely to be contraversial enough that some folks, bless their evil little hearts, will feel just as strongly for as you do against.

Re-posting it will make their day. Effectively this is giving plenty o’ free advertising to a position you never even wanted to know existed. Usually with a picture included to be even more attention-getting. This might even help it go viral when all you really wanted to do was squeeze its greedy little neck and drown it somewhere it wouldn’t be found for thousands of years.

So what to do with that righteous anger? Honest, there is a better way. Educate the world — even via FFB — about your position. Get up on that cyber stage and grandstand your beliefs. Forget the anti’s. Put out your for’s. Ignore the con’s. Explain the pro’s.

Who knows? Maybe someone will get angry enough to re-post it.

Downsize. NOW.

I don’t want to sound like an insurance agent or an Estate attorney, but for Christ sake face IT. Not doing so won’t make IT go away because IT will happen to any being ever born, and perhaps unlike my 93-year old aunt who’d been tapping her elderly finger’s on death’s door asking if she could please enter, it might happen to any of us when we least expect it.

You know the sort-of-funny undertaker joke? The hardest part of their job is to wipe off the look of surprise on the face of the corpse.

That would not have been a problem for my aunt Blanche. My aunt was an ace planner. She was a bookkeeper when a young sprat who later became a highly successful businesswoman. She was a fabulous organizer. A terrific manager. She drew up a Last Will and Testament almost 20 years ago. I knew when I last saw her that I was to inherit her house, art collection, books, furniture and car.

I should have been elated. I should have been prepared. I was neither.

That was not only because she seemed pretty much immortal, but also because Blanche had assured me repeatedly that everything was in the Will. And I knew she was a planner an an organizer. It was true, everything was in the Will. Down to the last detail about managing the cats. She even wrote her own obit, had me go over it with her and then wrote a note to me at the end saying I could ‘put it in my own words.’ So yes, she planned.

But here’s what really happened. By a strange twist of fate I found out that in CR the only way to avoid huge, gigantic, monster size fees when you pass on property is to do it through a corporation. I was able to blindside the attorney, who had managed to keep that little secret from my aunt for 20 years and — by chance and on a visit I almost didn’t make — got everyone to agree to create the corporation. If I had left it to the well-planned Will, the house and everything in it would have gone on the auction block. Not maybe, but definitely.

Lesson learned: Stay up-to-date on regulations. This should be written in size 2,500 font, bold and underscored if the death is in a foreign country. Double that if it’s a foreign country in which you do not reside, or if you do but tend to live under a rock or in a dream world.

Trusts are generally best, but stay informed applies both to donor and recipient.  I will not stoop to make any attorney jokes (although I have to hold my fingers back), but caveat emptor, or in this case let both the living and the dying beware.

Next. Like I said, my aunt was a fabulous organizer. Things were labeled and filed and sometimes cross-filed. While she was alive, I overlooked the fact that she was also a pack rat – maybe because she was so well-organized. After her death, I spent days and nights for a full month going through every corner, every drawer, all of which were full. This happened to be in a Very Large House. It took me more than two months of dealing with Stuff to contain most of the damage. I say damage not only because it was rough slogging, but because the losses were huge.

Next Lesson Learned: Stuff, like everything else in life, has its time. Use stuff. Wear it out or give it to someone who will. We don’t — or shouldn’t — live in museums. Bric-a-brac, books, art, any Thing has its day and does not necessarily retain an inherent value because it’s vintage or really old or beautiful. Much of Blanche’s stuff was stunning, and many things cost a lot of money. But that brings me to my final Lesson Learned:

No matter how much we love our stuff, it is Our Stuff. Our siblings, sons, daughters or any heirs  – other than our partner who is left to deal with the Stuff — did not choose these things. They’ve got their own Stuff anyway. It’s great to cherish what we have, but heirs will find life a lot easier if they know the actual sale value of your used Stuff and if they don’t feel guilty about not wanting it.

Get rid of what you don’t need in the new life you live with each major passage. Almost all of us will continue to gather new Stuff, even if we let go of the old. Life flows. Let your Stuff flow with it.

Because any unnecessary Stuff that lives on your one-way street will find itself out on your heir’s dead end alley.

I think that partly because when he was killed in 1968 we had already begun some serious tackling of social issues that included more than racism. We looked into the eye of sexism, we began to value inclusiveness and diversity. We admitted to illiteracy and underliteracy in our midst. We accepted the concept of vulnerability as it pertained to race, class and sex, un- and under-employment. We admitted to having race, gender, poverty and class issues that was life-destroying and as a nation decided we didn’t like it.

There are so many pieces of the 60′s tapestry, of MLK’s legacy that we can consider. What resonates most for me though, when I look at the differences between that USA and USA 2012, is the existence of a discomfort, a national pain,  a growning awareness that a noose of vulnerability was choking members of what we had believed was the world’s greatest society.

The social activism and voices of the 60′s that decried racism had in fact a far grander  vision than an opposition to racism. The larger message and the larger motivator was a desire to align vulnerability with historic American values of opportunity. It was not a nation that said we would be blind to color or class, gender or disability agism or xenophobia. Or that we could completely do away with it.

It was a nation that admitted, with an unaccustomed amount of humility, to the concept of vulnerablility. That vision said no to some things — like that differences, exclusion, and hate, would not rule. That we would root out unequal legislation and education, do away with strong if intangible barriers to opportunity. In the 60′s we agreed, generally as a nation, that the stronger of us would protect the weaker and that we did not want a society built on an unequal foundation in which the vulnerable could be brutalized by their difference or their lack.

But the vision was overwhelmingly a positive one — it was profoundly more ‘for’ than ‘against.’ Martin Luther King became the iconic voice of that larger vision of inclusiveness, appreciation of diversity, and protection of and service to the vulnerable. His metaphors, including of the mountain top, moved mountains and galvanized the hearts of a nation. Well most of it anyway. Obviously not those that managed to assassinate some of our greatest leaders and orators.

Nor did the 60′s fully resolve anything. But as a nation, we were reasonably united in wanting to spread the Reverend’s Dream to all.

Would Martin even recognize our world today? What would he say about inclusivity if he knew that almost 50 years after his death, ninety percent of Americans make less in real dollars than they did in 1973? [1]

What would he say about diversity if he knew that today the wealthiest 400 Americans control more wealth than half the people — not of the US — but more than half the wealth of the entire world? [1]

What would he say about vulnerability if he knew that instead of that taxes for the top 400 have plummeted from 51.2 percent in 1955 to 16.6 percent in 2007 (no later stats available, for the top 400.) [2]

What would he say about his dream if he knew that the USA had become the least socially mobile of the world’s economically advanced countries? [3]

What would Martin say? Stated more precisely, what would Martin do?

[1] http://smallplanet.org/surprising-facts
[2] http://wealthforcommongood.org/shifting-responsibility/
[3]http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/us/harder-for-americans-to-rise-from-lower-rungs.html?pagewanted=all

The first illustration of Archy. Seen in an advertisement in the New York Tribune on September 11, 1922, introducing the new column.

insects have
their own point
of view about
civilization a man
thinks he amounts
to a great deal
but to a
flea or a
mosquito a
human being is
merely something
good to eat
archy
excerpted from archy the cockroach’s poems. from don marquis’ timeless “archy & mehitabel”(1927) lack of caps & punctuation due to archy having to dive onto the keys to type.)

Did you know that as the Amazon rain forest gets decimated, the tribal people inhabiting it disappear as well? The loss of both is not only unacceptable, but bodes poorly for the future of our species. After all, diversity is essential, and the Amazon does provide 20 % of the oxygen we breathe. To the best of my knowledge nobody is making any new rainforest or new sources of oxygen for us.

But at the moment I’ve got a to a more micro approach to a macro issue.

It’s not breaking news that if the bamboo forests of China go, so goes the Ailuropoda melanoleuca melanoleucaor or Giant Panda whose home it is. Of course human encroachment is the driver of the extinction bus. Without the continuing decimation of the forests, the panda would be okay. Well, probably. The genetic reality is that as adorable as they are, they are nowhere near as successful a species as say the (groan) cockroach or the (screech) bedbug.

panda comma done eating period

If you’re a wordsmith you probably know the joke about the panda in the bar that “eats, shoots, and leaves” a play on the definition of a panda as an animal that “eats shoots and leaves.”  From the perspective of adaptability and survival here’s a third, noir version: Eats shoots, and leaves.

Diversity. Adaptability. Mutation. The life forms that hold those keys to the kingdom are the stayers for the long haul.

The cockroach, for example. These critters have been around for about 200 million years and are likely to outlast us one-million yr. old newbies. Cockroaches are one of the most successful species on earth partly because they are fully adaptable food sluts. They’ll eat (or suck for water on) almost anything. Really.

This currently includes cigarette butts, toothpaste, glue, feces, and paint among the neverending list of roachian delicacies.  OK, so it’s not our taste, but talk about the power of diversity! They can also live without their heads for up to a week (gross), go without food for up to a month, stay submerged up to a half-hour and go without air for 45 minutes (downright scary!)

They’re also intelligent. They balance competition with cooperation for resources. (Boy, could we learn a thing or two from these guys) They won’t touch arsenic or other heavy duty poisons. The way exterminators get them through level two poisoning. They walk in boric acid, for example, – they are roachian very hygenic –and  whilst cleaning themselves lick the poison.

The nasty little bedbug can survive up to a year without indulging its vampiric abilities. That’s like a year with no food or water for us.

We homo sapians sapians don’t begin to compare in survivability to these annoying critters.

My point? Hmm. Hadn’t thought about it that way. Just part 1 on the amazing staying power of diversity.

lies, damn lies, and politicians

!

My last post was about the upcoming loss of a childhood hero. This one is about a loss for us all; a man who became a hero to many involved in sustainability, and especially those of us priviliged to have met him and heard him speak.

It’s been dubbed the passing of a ‘green giant.’ Most of you won’t recognize the name Ray C. Anderson even though he owned the world’s most successful  floor covering company. Although you’ve most likely never heard of Interface, you’ve almost certainly walked on their carpets or flooring in offices and stores, no matter where in the world you live.

I met Ray Anderson when he keynoted a sustainability meeting in Seattle that I co-organized. I had already been inspired by his personal story of change, delightfully told in his punchy little book “Mid-Course Correction.”

Georgia born and raised, he exuded Southern charm, wit, and intelligence. He also knew something most of us didn’t bother to think about. Petro-chemical based, carpets accounted for the largest single product in the land-fills of the world. In 1994, while preparing to defend his multi-billion dollar company’s environmental policies, he read Paul Hawken’s Ecology of Commerce and eloquently described his epiphany as ”a spear through his chest” when he realized that he was ”one of the bad guys.”

From that moment on he dedicated himself and his company to the climb up what he dubbed “Mount Sustainability.”  Labeling it a myth that business cannot do well and do good, his goal was nothing short of zero waste, zero eco-footprint. At the time of his death today, he was 9 years from the target date of 2020.

From the forward to the 2010 update to his book, Business Lessons from a Radical Industrialist he wrote this about getting off oil:

“Distancing ourselves from the wellhead requires that we reimagine the antiquated, linear, take- make- waste industrial system of which we are all a part. And instead, to become part of a thoughtful, cooperative, cyclical system that mimics nature in the way that we design, source, manufacture, sell, install— and eventually reclaim and recycle— our products.”

Sounds lofty, but that’s what he was working on. Interface’s eco-metrics are already astounding. They range from simple offsets — such as  200 million airline passenger miles offset by some 106,000 trees to the vastly more complex 80 percent reduction in both water intake and landfill waste per unit of production. This in one of the most intensely petro-chemical products in a span of 13 years beginning in 1996.

Ray summed it up with his typical eloquent yet universal simplicity:  ”If we can do it, anybody can. If anybody can, everybody can. That includes you.”

It would be absurd to attempt to sum up his contributions in a blog; still I can’t resist pointing out that beyond the incredible power of his example during his lifetime, he leaves even more than the legacy of those accomplishments.

He leaves literally thousands of hard-working devotees in and outside of Interface so inspired by his life, passion and mission, that no obstacle could possibly be large enough to stop them meeting that deadline now, and zeroing out atop Mount Sustainability.

And here’s the real kicker. She now exemplifies everything she never, ever was.

My aunt was a childhood hero of mine because she was so damn stubbornly independent. She grabbed life and shook it until it gave her what she wanted. No matter her mother died way too early, leaving her motherless at 12 and that her father put her in an orphanage some months later. He was known around town as  ’Cauliflower Joe’ from his favorite scam of taking his carriage around, hawking beautiful cauliflowers with only the top ones good. He was a short con artist with no room in his life for a daughter.

It didn’t bother her though. She said she preferred the orphanage. But even today, she talks lovingly of her mother and seems to miss her, though she’s been dead for longer than most people get to be alive. 81 years ago. My aunt is 93 now.

She started her own business, went on the world’s longest railway trip — the trans Siberian Express, took trips to Korea, China, Europe, Mexico and others. She took a 3-month world cruise sans husband. They often took ‘separate vacations.’ When she was ready, she sold her business for a tidy sum and retired to Florida. She hated it there. She said It’s like an old people’s home, there’s no kids. So at age 69 she picked up, visited Costa Rica and a week later bought a house there. That was 24 years ago. It’s where she’ll die, probably in the pretty near future. She married and divorced five times, once to a mafioso who was stupid enough to try to go for her money. He lost. Let’s just say he lost big time, and leave it at that.

Avid bridge player, winner of tounaments. Avid theater goer, she turned part of her home into a small theater for the English-speaking community. Self-educated, voracious reader, she played a killer game of Trivia and Scrabble. When I visited her last time she had a thick book near her bed — NYT Sunday crosswords. Most of them done.

All her friends and most of her loved ones are gone. As is her hearing and her ability to get out of bed and take care of herself. Her time is over. And she is ready, very ready. In fact, as in her many years of active life, she’s kind of pushing the envelope.

It’s okay. She had a Life. She didn’t wait for anybody or anything. Within the law, she made her own laws. She reigned. She rocked.

I’ll miss her. I already do.

The story is about Mexico’s National Day of Reforestation, July 17, 2011. First a few factoids from the story:

• Nearly 128,000 people planted four million trees of 118 species at events across Mexico at 360 sites to help reforest 4,600 hectares.
• Volunteer numbers exceeded expectations by about 30,000.
• Mexico is one of the world’s five most reforested countries and has been acknowledged by UNEP, the UN’s Environmental Program.
• In the 5 years between 2005 – 2010, Mexico  cut its deforestation rate by more than half.
• The country’s official goal is zero deforestation in less than 9 years — by 2020 .