It’s the Fourth of July. It’s been 5 years since my last real girl friend. It’s been exactly 5 years. Because who can forget being dumped on Independence Day, when your best friend tells you a few days after being dumped, that she sure knew how to be independent on Independence Day. It’s a joke that’s tough to forget, and it took a while for me to realize how funny it was.
I didn’t start this piece to worship my last girl friend. Although maybe it’s time for me to be independent myself from her psychologically, so later this week I’ll take down her shrine in my bedroom.
Well things change. And thank God for it.
Today a lead article was about Sarah Palin throwing in the towel about her being the governor of Alaska anymore. It was about a year ago, when she burst on the national scene. She scared the bejesus out of me with the prospects of her being a John Mc Cain failed heartbeat away from being the next President. I’d prefer getting dumped every 4th of July for the next four years by someone I loved, than seeing her in office for four years. I’d be 50 times more likely to kill myself watching her in office than being dumped by anyone at anytime.
Last year at this time, I was biting my nails hoping and praying Obama would be elected. He was and he’s doing a great job. But I’m learning that there is only so much a president can do with the Congress “ball and chain” wrapped around his hands. It’s been a slow painful learning process for me to see how limited he is in office with Congress. But maybe it’s a good thing? Maybe it prevented George W. Bush from doing even more damage.
Maybe the lesson for me is we’ve gotta take the ball and run with it ourselves. Obama is surely one of my heros. But we need a lot more heros like Will Allen to solve our collective problems.
A few days ago, I slowly read this piece in the NY Times about an Urban Farmer, named Will Allen. It was a great article about a great man. For the last few days, between breaks in writing my third epilepsy piece, I’ve reread this article and watched a handful of Youtube videos about him and his urban farming.
It’s what Obama is talking about -- how we need to reinvent our American industry. I’m trying to do that by getting Chinese Medicine’s greatness folded into our national health care system. Well, you can’t be healthy, according to Chinese Medicine, if all you eat is processed food from the nearby corner grocery store, because you either don’t have a real grocery store or the money to buy real food in your ghetto.
It was a reservation I had about teaching Chinese Medicine theory, because it eliminates the poor from the possibility of having a healthy life, because of the food they are forced to eat.
Well, let me do a fast edit of this post. Because it’s a beautiful day to take a break to enjoy nature without any ball and chain of my own. “Honey, I’ll be there in a second” are words I haven’t uttered in 5 years. There’s an upside to everything except -- The Republican Party, Palin, Monsanto...ok let’s not go there too.
So read and watch this stuff on Will, a modern day hero. He makes it possible for all of us, including the impoverished, the possibility of eating healthy food on a regular basis. Later.
