Judy's Homegrown Blog

Originally posted at Writeindependent.org on Sept. 3, 2011

We have created a culture where cynicism is cool and in vogue. Cynics are realists, they’re hip and informed. Maybe cynics grew out of the “me” generation: if everyone is out for himself and not for the community in which he lives, then we will applaud or find humor in like-mindedness.

Seinfeld hit a chord with people because we saw ourselves in their extremely selfish, cynical characters who were repeatedly surprised by their own undoing.

Cynicism, or negativity is overrated. Cynics are less likely to be creative, less likely to pick up on a great idea, and slow to move. But cynicism is not a static condition; no one can live in a state of negativity for too long.

People naturally go through good times and bad times, high and low moods, times of creativity and times of dullness. If we were always cynical, I would be worried, but even the biggest cynic has to come up for air sometime.

To me, the opposite of cynicism is not positivism but romanticism. If cynicism is akin to realism, then romanticism is intellectual and aesthetic elitism. Unfortunately, both extremes seem a little harsh. Life is not an all-or-nothing “–ism.”

We seem to be exiting the era of labeling our “ages” like Age of Enlightenment, Industrial Age, Information Age, into an amorphous state of homogeneity. From this position, all things are possible, and all things cycle back.

Originally posted on September 2, 2011

If you were wondering who I am, I’m a recently divorced Mother of one 12-year old daughter. I have a rich, complex, deeply satisfying life. I believe in the power of positivism, laughter, and friendships. My purpose throughout this blog is to bring beauty back into your life with pictures of flowers and gardens, with poetry, and with truth-telling (or, sometimes myth-telling). I want to infuse the American people with hope and a strong sense that “everything will be okay!”

My actions are in line with my values. For example, I place health and happiness above all else. When there is a question of what to do, I will choose the happy route because if I am happy, I am more effective, present, and able to serve others.

Many people confuse the pursuit of happiness with selfishness. To know the difference, answer this question: if I choose this course, will it ultimately contribute to the greater good? If the answer is yes, then you are choosing a course of happiness.

I am extremely fiscally responsible. I live within my means, and I have absolutely no financial debt.

When I make a promise, I am very good at keeping it. The only time I mess up is when I forget that I’ve made a promise, but if reminded, I will follow through if it’s not too late. I am a woman of my word.

I have never done illegal recreational drugs. I believe that taking drugs or alcohol quite often affects health, and more devastatingly, negatively affects relationships. I do not feel that occasional drug use is all that bad, but the difficult question to answer is: how much is enough? Many drug users go over that line.

I not only believe in God (or whatever you want to call the creative energy), I experience Him (or that energy) on a daily basis. I’m not religious, just spiritual and loving.

I am extremely compassionate toward people who make messes of their lives, even when it is a result of stupidity. That is probably because I value humor too much to expect perfection from people. Life would be boring if people didn’t make stupid mistakes.

Before I claimed my first profession, when I was a little girl, I was a writer and a gardener. Now that I’m older, I am mostly just a writer and a gardener. These are the things that are closest to my heart, and where I find my greatest joy in expression.

Each time I blog, I post a photo from one of the many gardens I have visited. When you see a rose, I hope you remember that life is beautiful and that it is worth celebrating. Each flower is unique, they all have specific names, though I don’t always label them.

I leave you with one important tidbit: the definition of the word urpflanze. It stands for the essence of a flower that resides somewhere inside, but also represents that beauty that comes from its totality. It is the quality of the flower that you cannot pin down to one particular petal, one word of description, one blush of color. Yet, taking all these things together, they make up the essence that no other flower inhabits.

When you look into the urpflanze of a rose, it will relax you. That is one reason why flowers are so powerfully intoxicating.

Each one of us has this urpflanze in the same way each rose is unique. Teach this to your children, and recognize this quality in their smiling faces.

women empowerment – global warming – congress – POTUS

I am re-posting the 290 or so posts that got lost when my website called Writeindependent.org went away, along with the blog I kept from September 1, 2011 through election day, November 6, 2012.

I will try to do my best at organizing the blog in the same order it appeared, along with the date it was originally posted. I may be a month off for some of the posting dates, but the ones that fit into current events are mostly accurate to their original date.

The following post appeared on September 1, 2011:

One day, I went to a dry cleaner to drop off a pair of pants. It was an ecologically friendly dry cleaner, supposedly. Turns out, it was anything but friendly.

The owner of the shop asked what I was reading because I was holding a book.

“The Organic Manifesto,” I told him. “It’s written by Maria Rodale, who believes that carbon emissions can be cleaned up if we just switch our farming practices to organic.”

The next thing the owner of the dry cleaning shop said stopped me dead in my tracks.

“It’s too late,” he said.

He wanted to continue, but I didn’t have the time to stay and find out what made him say such a horrible thing. In fact, if he had already given up, it didn’t matter what he had to say next.

Part of me wanted to cry, and the other part of me wanted to go home and eat worms. If it was already too late, why do anything about anything? Why even try?

It was then that I decided I had to do something. If I just sat at home and let the world play out its unintended but usual course of events, then I deserved what I got. But if I stood up for what I believed in and used my voice, which is all any of us really have anyway, why then, I could maybe make a difference.

And what, exactly, do I believe?

I believe that even though people are a mixture of good decisions and bad impulses, of logic and reason and feelings, that deep down at our core, if each of us were asked “Would you save the world if the choice were yours to make?” that each of us would answer “yes.” Because if you say no, you’re as good as dead.

I also believe that the United States is full of basically good and decent people, who are creative, spirited, and love their country.

I have traveled all over the world, and I have always been happy to come home. Though I enjoy traveling, learning about other cultures, and I appreciate people with other insights and styles, I still love coming home to the great United States. I have been proud to be an American, and want to regenerate that feeling by improving our lot.

Every generation generally wants the same thing for their kids: they want to leave the world a better place than how they found it. For the first time in history, we can be very afraid that it will definitely NOT be better or we can strive to MAKE it better. And I believe that we still want our children to inherit a better planet.

Dear God,

How much more can I take?

You wouldn’t know it from the looks of my Judy’s Homegrown website, but I used to be a political junkie.

I used to run a website called Writeindependent.org whose mission was to fix congress. It ran from September 1^st, 2011 through December 31, 2012. I had all the congressional districts listed, with all the candidates running in each district, all the candidates running for senate in each state (there were 33 seats in the senate open), and even all the Presidential candidates listed, with their platforms.

I had asked each candidate to sign a Pledge for Honest Candidates, asking them to remove money from politics. I put a red star by the names of those people who were honest enough to say that money didn’t matter to them, and that serving our country was more important than a high-paying lobbying job after they left congress.

I also posted roughly 320 blog posts over that time.

When the 2012 election was over, and it was time to renew my website, my developer who was hosting the site wanted to charge $900 for the next year. Since my website hadn’t taken off as I had expected, and since I couldn’t afford to keep it going at that rate, I tried moving it to a host for safekeeping until my book was published (the one I’m writing now about my experiences.) If my book took off, the website might get some attention (read: donations) and I’d be back in business.

The migration did not go well, and I have no website now. But even more sadly, my blog is gone, along with the history of it: what date each post came online, in what order.

How much more can a person take, God? All that work? Gone?

I know that people say things happen for a reason. I think the reasons are this: one, I am meant to have difficulties that seem insurmountable so that I can rise above it. And two: nothing in life is permanent, not even our memories. We are just a flicker, and then we are gone.

I am not dead yet, but I think I understand what it feels like to be dead. If I thought my work was done here, I would not care about the blog or the website I had created. But if anybody cares about our world, and I think you should, then you should be weeping for what I tried to do but failed.

partisanship – Writeindependent.org – congress – independent – politics – money in politics – money out of politics – corruption – bribery – political ads – media – parties – dysfunction – Anti-Corruption Act – Lawrence Lessig – Rootstrikers – DISCLOSE Act – Clean Money – Clean Money Campaign – Trevor Potter – Center for Media and Democracy – Lisa Graves – United Republic – Represent.us

If our government is doing a lousy job, it’s not because of the president or a recalcitrant congress. It’s because of soccer, baseball, and the two party system. Research has proven that unless you are an independent thinker, you are likely to identify with your parents’ party. Your parents wanted you to think for yourself, but they may also have wanted you to vote Republican or Democrat. Remember, we voted those representatives into office, so we ultimately have to take responsibility.

Partisanship is a sinking ship.

Rather than thinking how to solve the red vs blue problem, we’re too busy ferrying the kids to soccer. We the people go about our lives, irrespective of what our government is doing behind our backs. We’re going to little league games, antique shows, NASCAR events, the mall, acting as homework helper or cabby to the kids: how can we be bothered to pay attention to politics? My friends always complain that they don’t have enough time to learn everything they need to know because they are just trying to keep up with family affairs.

In short, the majority of us have turned a blind eye to the machinations of Washington. But it’s even worse than that: some people who do care, who have their finger on the pulse of politics, refuse to stand up against the system.

In my extended family, I have a cousin who clerked for a Supreme Court Justice. He is probably one of the brightest people I know, so I asked him to help write a question or two for the nonpartisan presidential debates I host and moderate for my website. He declined to offer any questions, but wrote “I am a died (sic) in the wool Democrat” implying that he toed the party line. People who live “in it” are loathe to look at themselves as a source of gridlock. Or worse yet, maybe he’s afraid that speaking against party loyalty will ruin his chances of moving up the ladder.

Democrats and Republicans have made politics into a business. Both parties know how to raise funds, market themselves, and “educate” the masses through repetition. Nothing will ever change if we keep following this format. Behind all of the showmanship runs the engine of big business heaping money on the media in the way of political ads.

Many people are wise to these tactics, but the cynics are not the ones who will regain control over our rogue system. No; cynicism is destructive. Rather, welcome the rise of thinking and acting Independents who connect their heads to their hearts. This is the group of people I will define as a huge powerhouse of voters, comprised of three factions (that may overlap):

1. The “lesser of two evil” voters.
2. Angry dissidents who refuse to vote either party.
3. People who understand that it’s not about the parties per se, but the funders who are causing the problems.

Let us join forces with a fourth faction, probably the largest group of people:

4. Americans who are dissatisfied with their advertised choices, don’t know their candidates, and don’t care because they feel disenfranchised or hopeless.

The metrics on this collection of souls would be a super majority, and I welcome a poll to prove it.

The independents live with the sober reality that the American dream is shot full of holes. Not everybody gets rich by putting in hard work, as the Republicans wish. Not everyone gets healthcare or their basic needs met, as the Democrats wish. As the gap widens between the “haves” and the “have nots,” the independents see a disparity: some people are getting fabulously wealthy without doing much to promote the public benefit, while others are struggling to survive.

It will be up to the independents and independent thinkers to restore our country. These are the people who don’t believe everything they see on television and decide what is best based on their own findings. As more voters realize that the two-party system is not serving the public good, intelligent Republicans and wise Democrats will back away from the rigidity of their respective party’s ideology and rise up to the challenges facing us. No longer identified by the party, they will think for themselves and collaborate through their business, social, and political endeavors without having to form a new party. People who think for themselves might vote, for example, for representatives who support a measure such as the American Anti-Corruption Act, a comprehensive and aggressive strategy for removing money’s influence on government. It is the antidote to extreme capitalism, the kind that has hijacked our government and has written most of the regulations that keep small businesses tied up with red tape.

The leaders of this independent streak are the ones who know how the deck is stacked, and are willing to stand up against those forces. I attended a conference on November 17^th with these movers and shakers: Lawrence Lessig of Rootstrikers; Trent Lange of the California Clean Money Campaign; Trevor Potter, attorney for United Republic; and Lisa Graves of the Center for Media and Democracy.

Lawrence Lessig, author of Republic Lost and Harvard Professor of Law, opened the conference called A 28^th Amendment? Legal Issues, Remedies and Strategies to Get Money Out of Politics. His entertaining description of the problem of money’s influence stirred the audience of three hundred. Trent Lange, of the California Clean Money Campaign promotes the California DISCLOSE Act, forcing businesses to show not just their name, but logo on political advertisements they fund. Watch for the DISCLOSE Act in upcoming elections. Trevor Potter, former FEC chairman and Stephen Colbert’s attorney for his short-lived Super PAC named Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, helped draft the American Anti-Corruption Act along with a think tank of activists from United Republic, now known as Represent.us.

Lisa Graves of the Center for Media and Democracy stands to teach us the most out of all these people. She is in the trenches of the money-in-politics problem. All you have to do is read her reaction to Jeb Bush’s “Foundation for Excellence in Education” (FEE) which took place on November 28^th. Her excellent article explains the close ties between FEE and ALEC, the Super PAC that is 98% funded by corporations who write the legislation that paves the way for their dominance, then uses that money to buy your vote for their candidates through advertising.

The siren song of “money out of politics” may be the item that brings voters together long enough to bridge the gap between parties. Eighty percent of Americans, regardless of party, agree that money’s influence has had a negative effect on democracy. Just one million voters are needed to promote the American Anti-Corruption Act to pressure congress to pass this legislation and clean up their campaigns, allow lobbyists to work with integrity, and stop the revolving door. If you add your name, and then vote for those candidates who sponsor the bill, we can pressure congress to do something they have resisted for decades: rein in the bribery that goes on today, everyday.

fiscal cliff – Writeindependent.org – saving the world – life purpose – global warming – pollution – war – fracking

I have an eleven year old special needs daughter. Since my divorce, I have been trying to make a living without much luck. My skill set is varied, but doesn’t fit into any box neatly. I had the hair-brained idea to start a website that was intended to “fix Washington” or at least allow the average person to run for federal office without spending a fortune. The more congress misbehaves, the better Writeindependent.org should do.

That idea never made much money.

However, when I explain my purpose in life to my daughter, I tell her “Mommy’s trying to save the world,” because it’s just too difficult to explain how politics run everything or ruin things, as the case may be.

We worry far too much about the fiscal cliff.

The fiscal cliff is the least of our worries, because the fiscal cliff is a human concoction. We got ourselves here on purpose. If we really wanted to get out of our financial troubles, we have everything we need to summon the political will to make that happen.

If we want to worry about something, we should be worrying about our children and their future instead.

The big ticket items for me have always been, and will always be: will my daughter have enough to eat, and can I put a roof over her head? Will she be safe and sound in her bed at night, and healthy enough to enjoy herself? The difference between me and someone who worries about the fiscal cliff is that I think years ahead.

The looming problems seem to me, in order of importance:

1. Global warming. If you think a fiscal cliff is horrible, just wait until your home is ripped apart by a tornado or sunk under two feet of water and then tell me about your financial troubles. And if you’re living far from the water and away from the tornadoes, then please tell me: what will happen to food prices when our dust bowl can’t provide the quantity of food we need? If we don’t gear up for more extreme weather, it’s not that we will suffer today, but that our children will suffer for years to come.
2. Pollution. If you thought pollution wasn’t a problem now, just wait until fracking and weather patterns collide. Fracking may be “safe” under dry conditions, but when storm water floods through an area, it indiscriminately picks up whatever is in its path.  A report published by the NYSDEC called a Review of Selected Non-Routine Incidents in Pennsylvania (PDF) explains what happened to one site under flood conditions: “The discharge of fluid from the well pad was caused by the failure of stormwater controls on the well pad due to extraordinary precipitation and other factors.” And trust me, you don’t want your children drinking from wells or a water table that has fracking contaminants in them. For more information about fracking, read here.
3. War. I used to think that war was something we could just stop. Now I think it’s a problem that will never get solved. There will always be bullies and vendettas, religious fanaticism, or people who have something that other people want. But what I do see is a trend toward peaceful involvement, of activism speaking louder than bombs. When more calamitous events occur that threaten human survival, we won’t be thinking about making weapons, but rather how to make our way in a new world by cleaning up messes: hurricane by hurricane, and health-related event by health-related event. We will all be soldiers of storms, fighting the elements and our own struggle to find energy sources.

Every now and then, when I fret over money, my daughter reminds me, “You’re saving the world, Mom” and then I don’t feel so badly that it’s not coming together just yet. “Yes,” I agree with her. “It’s a long term project.”

For solutions to the fiscal cliff and our flagging economy, visit here.

Writeindependent.org – global warming – climate change – Sandy – extreme weather – foreign policy – Obama – Romney – national debt – economy – jobs – fracking – fossil fuels – military – war – Trans Pacific Partnership – TPP – SOPA – PIPA – internet – copyright – patent – NDAA – National Defense Authorization Act – Maldives

Children love fairy tales, and adults do too. As long as we can suspend our disbelief, we will go along with the story. But what if your child were being duped by a shyster, or conned by a shell game? Would we allow that person to mislead our son or daughter right in front of our faces?

There are seven ways in which both Romney and Obama are misleading our children by omission of the facts and relying on voter amnesia:

1. Foreign Policy: Both candidates want to keep spending our children’s yet-to-be-earned taxpayer dollars. They both said in the debates that they will continue humanitarian efforts abroad, and Romney stated: “identify…a form of council that could take the lead in Syria and then make sure they have the arms necessary to defend themselves…that they don’t have arms that get into the wrong hands…(to) be used against us down the road.”  If we have to borrow from our children’s future or China to keep looking like the savior country of the planet, what kind of future will our children have supporting this illusion?
2. Mounting National Debt: While Romney proposes a $2 trillion increase in military, Obama will still keep war spending higher than Bush’s first term. Neither candidate sees the threat that continued drone warfare poses to our security.
3. Creating Jobs: Obama and Romney both think that jobs will magically appear once we either spend more taxpayer dollars, as in the former, or stop taxing the wealthy companies, as in the later. Can we just all agree: they are both bad ideas. (See number 5 below.) If we depend upon payroll taxes to fund our country’s activities, we’re like Ouroboros devouring ourselves without producing a healthy outcome. And we know that tax breaks for the wealthy just make them wealthier; it doesn’t make them start spreading that wealth around. There is a way to get the economy going again, but neither one is talking about it. For answers, visit this link.
4. Banks and other Financial Institutions: The biggest lie of all is that our economy will be fine someday under either a Romney or Obama presidency. If the economy is chugging along at all, it’s because it is built on a house of cards and we’re all holding our breath for fear it will come crashing down as soon as someone blows it. With derivatives at around 700 trillion dollars, much of the world’s economy is based on one huge lie, and neither candidate is willing to address this problem. It’s the biggest act of omission ever perpetrated on the world, engineered by market masturbators, who are hopped up on cocaine and diddling themselves in their financial palaces.
5. Food, Water and Health: This is where the shit really hits the fan. We can ignore the rest of the world, we can ignore the wealthy who run the show, but we can’t ignore the fact that we are hungry or sick. Obama’s idea for creating jobs is to drill for more oil or to frack the hell out of our natural gas and burn, baby, burn that fossil fuel. Fracking is shown to make our water unfit to drink. Both candidates are backed by the same seed and chemical companies who are putting toxins in our soil and crossing genera with patentable gene products that make a mockery of natural processes. They threaten the fabric of life as we know it with untested, unproven chemical and scientific “experiments” that have already been unleashed into our agriculture and into the animal and pest worlds. The genie is already out of the bottle, but only our children will see the effects of these greed-induced nightmares.
6. Sovereignty and Civil Liberties: Neither Romney nor Obama are interested in your children’s future, and here are two examples. The Trans Pacific Partnership, which both support, would override our country’s sovereignty by ceding our highest court in the land to a tribunal of three attorneys. Under the TPP, corporations will be able to sue our government if our environmental or copyright laws interfere with their ability to make a profit. They will be able to use other countries’ copyright and patent rights to sue for our use of generic drugs under our country’s laws. The TPP is the “work around” answer to our rejection of SOPA and PIPA and to California’s passage of Proposition 37, if it indeed does pass, forcing corporations to label food that is genetically modified. Secondly, woe betide the president who stands up to the military industrial complex, saying we aren’t going to be the world’s policeman anymore by handing out arms like so much Halloween candy.  Obama signed the NDAA, and I suppose he would have been assassinated if he hadn’t.
7. Medicare and Social Security: Romney has stated that he’s not going to affect Medicare for today’s seniors, but the implied (unstated) fact is that he wants to rid our children’s safety nets for the future. This might be okay if you are lucky enough to be born into a wealthy family, but it won’t help most people in this country.
8. Global Warming: None of the above will matter to our children if we continue to ignore this problem. In the aftermath of Sandy, perhaps those of us who have suffered losses of life or homes will finally realize that it is not a hoax. The cost cannot simply be measured in dollars, but there will be costs to the taxpayer every time the federal government swoops in to help. Climate change is the reason we have had record high temperatures and drought that now affects food prices for corn, eggs, chicken, beef, and anything that contains high fructose corn syrup. We burn fossil fuels like there is no tomorrow, with no regard to how our children will keep up this frenzied pace. Neither candidate is visionary, because neither one has a clue how to cauterize the use of fossil fuels fast enough to lay a viable path for the future. Visit the Maldives if you want to see a country go underwater.

There are alternatives to these two candidates, with actual solutions to these problems. Watch the third party debates or the nonpartisan debates. In four years, it may just be the only answer to our mounting crises.

What am I doing with my “spare time”? Check out this video and see if you can catch me and my daughter:

protest – vote – lesser of two evils – why vote – ballot – tampering – voter apathy – independent – swing state – Writeindependent.org – toss up – state – suppression – stand up

Are you tired of voting for the lesser of two evils? Do you feel, like the rest of America, that we have only two choices, that both of them are backed by the same monopolies? Were you thinking about NOT VOTING? If you are worried that your vote isn’t being counted properly, finish reading this page.

It’s time to change all that.

Instead of voting for the lesser of two evils or Not Voting, state your displeasure with our government by casting a Protest Vote.

There are several ways to cast a protest vote:

1. Vote for the candidate whom you would most like to see win
2. Vote for the candidate who has signed the Pledge for Honest Candidates, who will help remove the influence of money on our political system
3. Write in a vote for someone who wants to win, but who isn’t on the ballot.

This year, make it known that you do not like the direction our politicians have taken us.

Finally, if you don’t trust the government to count your vote, visit this page to learn how to restore our voting system by counting the ballot at the poll before it leaves the polling station: http://bit.ly/RIGdBl