Appreciation nurtures health and peace

Create the world you want to live in, by appreciating what there is to appreciate. Here is a watercolor sketch I painted yesterday of Sein Creek where it flows into Hagg Lake in Oregon.

Wall of Moms: War is not healthy for children and other living things

My mom was Another Mother for Peace. She posted this poster on a childhood bedroom wall, "War is not healthy for children and other living things." (She posted the poster in my brother's room, in case he got any notions of growing up to become a murderer-for-hire for the government--(aka, joining the military.) When the current pandemic hit, the United Nations called for a ceasefire for health reasons. And the Wall of Moms link arms (while wearing the prescribed face masks to prevent their exhalations from affecting the health of someone else) as they stand united in front of federal troops who are sent out to attack the populace. Moms keep standing up for peace, and health. The camouflaged and arsenal-loaded federal troops all looked like boys to me, in the photos I saw. Not a single mom among them. It's long past due to have the boys (of any age) step aside in the name of public health. There are a whole lot of moms who can do it all better. My mom, even when she had Alzheimer's, recalled at a Mother's Day tea in her assisted living facility that her proudest memory was getting arrested with Maya Angelou at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site as they all chanted, "No More War! No More War! No More War!"

Mi madre era otra madre para la paz (Another Mother for Peace). Colocó este póster en la pared de un dormitorio infantil: "La guerra no es saludable para los niños y otros seres vivos". (Colocó el póster en la habitación de mi hermanito, en caso de que tuviera alguna idea para convertirse en un asesino mercenario para el gobierno, es decir, ser soldado en el ejército). Cuando la pandemia actual golpeó todo el mundo, las Naciones Unidas pidieron un alto el fuego por razones de salud. Y el Muro de las Mamás (Wall of Moms) une los brazos (mientras usan las máscaras faciales prescritas para evitar que sus exhalaciones afecten la salud de otras personas) mientras se unen frente a las tropas federales que fueron enviadas para asaultar a la población. Las mamás siguen defendiendo la paz y la salud. Las tropas federales camufladas y cargadas de arsenal me parecieron todos niños, en las fotos que vi. No hay ni una madre entre ellos. Ya es hora para los niños (de cualquier edad) se hacen a un lado en nombre de la salud pública. Hay muchas mamás que pueden hacer todo mejor. Mi madre, incluso cuando tenía Alzheimer, recordó en un té del Día de la Madre en su centro de vida asistida que su recuerdo más orgulloso era ser arrestada con Maya Angelou en el sitio de prueba nuclear de Nevada (Nevada Nuclear Test Site) mientras todos gritaban: "¡No más guerra! ¡No más guerra! ¡No más guerra!"

New Memes: Global Feminism and World Peace

Global Feminism. 

2001 Earth drawing by Lynette Yetter, 

she transformed into a women's-symbol meme in 2020.

A meme I just created with my 2001 Earth drawing is the woman's symbol above. This meme has many meanings: Mother Earth, and women as Earth's foundation--in other words, Global Feminism. Women's power and Mother Earth's power need to be the guides for human societies. That's my intention with this meme.

Here's some background on my earth memes. The earth drawing, I created back in 2001 just after the twin towers in New York blew up. I drew a new view of the world to promote mutual understanding of each other as family members on Mother Earth. I shrunk the Atlantic ocean so that New York and Afghanistan share the same side of the planet. 

On the Saturday after the Twin Towers blew up I went to perform music with my panpipes and kena on the Santa Monica Pier, even though all large gatherings were cancelled due to fears of getting bombed by terrorists. To express my hope for world peace, I cut out my earth drawing and glued it on a tall blue candle in a glass--like the candles that usually have a picture of a Saint. I lit my candle and set it on my little table near my tip bucket and CDs for sale as I played to the massive emotional crowds roiling along the pier. 

I printed my earth drawing on to greeting cards, with the caption, "Shine your light. Illuminate humanity." 

Then I created the World Peace Flag project with this image, a community art project for all ages, which displayed in art galleries in Los Angeles. I'll dig in my website archives and find the page I made for this project, with downloadable earth to color with your hopes and dreams for the future, to add to the World Peace Prayer Flag Project. When I find that archived link, I'll post it here.

More recently, I re-purposed my Earth drawing into this meme for World Peace.

As you can see, I turned the south-pole up. And I titled it in Spanish, "Paz Mundial." I made this meme with the passion for people in so-called "developing countries" to be the voices, the agents, for world peace. The people that suffer the most from transnational capitalist greed and destruction need to be the people who define world peace--and how to get there. That is why the south is on top in my meme of World Peace.

What are your thoughts about world memes, world peace memes and women symbol memes?

Share the wealth!

So many changes happening, thanks to massive ongoing protests in the streets. One change was someone I used to argue with about values and money. He believed getting rich yourself had no connection to values bad or good. Well, this friend just emailed me that he woke and will no longer teach his lucrative online class on achieving financial independence. Yay! 

He asked me (and others) for suggestions on how to rethink wealth in a racially just way. Here are some of my ideas:

What if we redefine wealth as happiness? Bhutan has done that. Instead of a Gross National Product index, they have a Gross National Happiness Index. Racial justice adds to happiness.

Developing compassionate action builds a wealth of happiness. You can check out some compassion research here: https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/the-compassionate-mind It turns out we (and baby chimpanzees) are happier when we altruistically give (or even see someone else give), than we are when we receive. This is assuming one has the basics of food, shelter, clothing, and money to pay the bills, clean air, water, soil to plant their veggie garden; and friendly people around in an atmosphere of mutual respect. 

To start balancing the scales so everyone has the basics from which to altruistically give, Cameron Whitten two weeks ago launched The Black Resiliency Fund. Portland, Oregon Black folks in need receive funds donated by non-Black folks. In the first four days people's donations totaled about a quarter of a million dollars. At the two week mark, the total is half a million dollars and growing. Funds are getting disbursed directly to Black folks in Portland to pay for rent, utilities, internet, transportation, medical costs, student loan debt, credit card debt, child care, moving costs and more. The Black Resiliency Fund is compassionate action creating happiness for the givers and the receivers!

Along these lines, my book 72 Money Saving Tips for the 99% focuses on nurturing happiness by strengthening relationships and building local community (the real wealth!), while weaning away from corporations, and saving money in the process. (Thank you, Jerry Greenfield, co-founder of Ben&Jerry's, for endorsing my book!)

What ideas do you have for sharing the wealth?

BLM: How to remedy "lack of care or compassion"? Free medical and dental clinics staffed by volunteers

New Portland, OR police chief Chuck Lovell points out on CBS News the "lack of care or compassion'' by the officers involved in killing George Floyd.

"When I watched the video of what happened to Mr. Floyd ... I remember the big takeaway I had ... it wasn't the tactics, it wasn't the number of officers who were there ... it was really the lack of care and compassion. The thought that this is an idea that could exist ... it almost felt like you're not important. To me, the fight is not with each other. The fight for all of us is against that idea that people, institutions, agencies ... can harbor that feeling and it has bad outcomes for people."

Lovell is right-on naming the root of racism and so many other -isms; it all comes down to harboring a lack of care or compassion in one's heart. 

How to change hearts? How to remedy harboring "lack of care or compassion" in people's hearts? 

Many spiritual teachings present tools for doing just that; it's sometimes called "The Golden Rule"--treat others as you would like to be treated. And sometimes we need a road map, a guidebook, an instruction manual for how to get from here to there.

History presents many examples to guide us, both negative and positive. U.S. history seems rife with negative examples of what happens when we harbor lack of care and compassion in our hearts (slavery, police brutality, wars of invasion and aggression, settler colonialism, strip mining, clear cutting old growth forests, massacring indigenous people, polluting industries, discrimination in all its forms, and on and on).

However, Portland history also presents examples of people uniting together with hearts brimming with care and compassion. 

One such example is the Free Medical and Dental Clinics founded and run by the Black Panthers and staffed by volunteer doctors and dentists from OHSU. 

(You can read all about this inspiring time in Lucas Burke and Judson Jeffries' book The Portland Black Panthers: Empowering Albina and Remaking a City.) 

Although Black Panther free medical and dental clinics were eventually destroyed by a series of decisions by Portland city officials and urban planners (whose hearts apparently harbored lack of care and compassion), now is the perfect time to start fresh. Here's one way.

OHSU, I'm talking to you. You can encourage dentists and doctors to once again volunteer to treat folks for free. In addition to studying the Black Panthers' Free Medical and Dental Clinics as a model of care and compassion, you can also emulate the volunteer-run Haight Ashbury Free Clinic. 

Founded in 1967, the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic's mission is "provide compassionate care regardless of anyone's ability to pay." It was the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic's volunteers who coined the now famous phrase, "Health care is a right, not a privilege." 

In conclusion, there are many ways (beyond a major restructuring of how police behave) we can nurture each other with hearts harboring care and compassion. One way is for volunteer doctors and dentists from OHSU to ASAP staff free medical and dental clinics in locations accessible for lots of Black folks and everyone. Follow the successful models of the former Portland Black Panthers', and current Haight-Ashbury, Free Clinics. Quickly establishing volunteer-staffed free medical and dental clinics is one of many ways to follow Portland's new police chief Chuck Lovell's implied advice to harbor care and compassion in our hearts. 

George Floyd and History's inspiring lessons / Lecciones de la historia

(El español sigue el inglés)

Bread and Roses

As we go marching marching
in the beauty of the day . . .

Blacks suffering extreme racist abuse, women treated like property, immigrants blamed for everything--yet we united 30,000 strong, demanded better wages, and though they tried to kill us, we won! 

The New York Sun reported: 

Never before has a strike of such magnitude succeeded in uniting in one unflinching, unyielding, determined and united army so large and diverse a number of human beings.

Reporter Mary Heaton Vorse explained why The Lawrence Strike of 1912 made such an impact:

It was the spirit of the workers that seemed dangerous. They were confident, gay, released, and they sang. They were always marching and singing. The gray tired crowds ebbing and flowing perpetually into the mills had waked and opened their mouths to sing, the different nationalities all speaking one language when they sang together.

Give us Bread and give us Roses

 The lesson here? More singing! Chants are good. Singing is better. Write songs. Sing songs.

The Velvet Revolution

The power of the powerless, writes Vaclav Havel, is to live in truth. When enough people live in truth, a society built on lies crumbles of its own accord. Faced with about 500,000 peaceful people in the streets of Prague protesting police violence (sound familiar?) in November 1989, the Soviet Government resigned. From night to day Prague went from authoritarian dictators to electing a playwright former political prisoner as President. Freedom and creativity flourished.

George Floyd memorial marches today

History teaches us--stay focused and peaceful. Stay united. Be specific in our demands. Give specific action steps to politicians that they can enact immediately. In a thoughtful hour-long press conference, New York Governor Cuomo spells out specific demands and articulates action steps--a primer for seizing this moment for making massive positive reform. 

And sing!

As we go marching marching . . . 

Coyote

Trickster coyote knows how to navigate the world’s tricks. 

When all is in confusion, pandemic of chaos, 

coyote knows the route through the darkness. 

She sees better in the night than I. 

She guides me. 

Coyote is at home in tricksterville. Nothing new there. 

Or rather, everything new and constantly changing is her eternal reality. Although, 

they say to keep a coyote out of your backyard, constantly rearrange your outdoor furniture; she doesn’t like novelty. 

Nevertheless, trotting along, following her nose, 

Coyote leads me safely through the valleys of darkness to my destination morning home.

About this poem:

This week a coyote visited me twice. Once in a dream, guiding me on a long dark path to my home. And for the first time, I saw a coyote in our neighborhood. 2:30 in the afternoon she stood motionless on the neighbor’s lawn, next to the massive Douglas Fir where a pair of bald eagles rested one night a few summers back. She stood there for a few minutes in the quietude of quarantine. Instead of coyote as trickster, she appeared to me as calm, certain and trustworthy. She led me home in my dream, and stays close in my neighborhood.

Tulip painting, Make Art! Heal the spirit!

Watercolor of a tulip I painted in our garden during quarantine. 

Make art! Heal the spirit!
https://fineartamerica.com/featured/tulip-lynette-yetter.html

Make Art to heal humanity

Trillium I painted in our garden during this global quarantine.

Shine your light! Illuminate humanity. 

Peace, Lynette
https://fineartamerica.com/featured/trillium-lynette-yetter.html

Anxiety (or: I’ve Got Those Novel Corona Virus Blues)

Stop.
Stop in the name
of love. Let it be. There
will be an answer, Let it be.
Musicians sing the answer, There
will be an answer, Let it be. When news

seems hopeless, full of anxious worry, despair,
Let it be. But John Lennon was murdered. Climate crisis
escalates. Maybe fears of corona virus (headlines say) are affecting sales of fossil fuels. Stock market dropping. Maybe these changes, like stars in a black night sky, are a new way of seeing, of living. Using less fossil fuels is good for all species. Right? Anxiety, corona virus. Shall I bring my books all home from my thesis desk in the Reed library? Shall I cancel all my social encounters? Shall I hole up with my partner at home—no guests—in order to protect ourselves from corona virus?
The thought of acting on this anxiety by shutting down, shutting away, isolation, makes me weep. Mourn. Pink POLST on my fridge tells first responders not to resuscitate me. Life I want to live while I’m alive. To shut out all joy of human interaction in order to hopefully avoid illness or death—for me is a kind of living death. Day by day, I’ll decide what’s appropriate, based on ever-changing public health warnings, and my own conscience and heart. Let it be. Swine flu. 2009, Lima, Peru. Quarantine. The SGI Buddhist group (and other groups) cancelled all gatherings.Advised everyone to stay home. Do not visit each other. It passed. Before that, it was bird flu. Someone I know survived bubonic plague. That was H., who grew up on a ranch in Colorado, and now lives on 100 acres of
Minnesota forest where she makes pottery. Let it be. Bridge over troubled waters. If you can’t let it be, walk over it to the other side. Poking a pimple doesn’t help it heal. Let it be. One foot in front of the other, eyes open. Reminding myself to enjoy the moment, slant of dawn light on the upper branches of the giant fir next door. Glisten of frost on green lawns and black mud tire tracks. Song of a flicker greeting the day. This morning my partner saw two crows outside our kitchen window. They bobbed in unison as they cawed—a mating ritual. Celebration of connection, love, cycles of life, rooted in their lizard past, dinosaur scales evolved to glistening black blue iridescent feathers. Moon last night, round white crisp disc beaming reflected firelight from the blazing sun through our
bedroom window, coating our comforter and wool blanket humped bodies in its light that has shined since before humans were a glimmer on the evolutionary calendar, and will continue to shine billions of earth cycles looping through space into the future. There will be an answer, Let it be. Stop (worrying) in the name of love. Get your rod and reel and go fishing from the bridge over troubled waters; enjoy the sight and sound of its tumbling rapids.
Let it be.

About this poem: I wrote this March 10, 2020 in an interfaith spiritual writing group. We'd chosen our topic months before: anxiety. Wow! Mystic, eh?