Review of FOOD MATTERS

FOOD MATTERS, a film that rates 4 star I think on the Netflix rating system, should be seen by everyone so you can judge for your self and then quickly forgotten as a film that was mislabeled and overrated.

First, the misnamed part.  It is not about food. the quality of food, different types of food, the choices of food, the production of food.  It does not explore the  four societies that successfully have little heart disease or cancer or the reasons that many of it's citizens experience longevity.  Sardinia, Italy; Okinawa, Japan; Loma Linda, Calif. and the Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica are not even mentioned as the examples of healthy centers on the earth. 

The film does say our food is sprayed too much, travels too far and is too cheap to be of quality.  Then the experts promote vitamins, raw food drinks and other therapies for diseases.  After a little research on the individuals speaking though out the film I get the feeling they belong on the back of a buckboard wagon selling snake oil.  Well, in a way they are doing the modern day version of that if you read their websites. They are all about self promotion.

Andrew Weil, Micheal Pollan and Carol Deppe are people that speak thoughtfully about quality of food and choices that make health easy to understand.  I strongly recommend that you spend your time with these people and skip this film.  I find it sad the film did not interview these people.

More on THE NEW GOLDEN AGE

          My attitude about current events has totally changed since reading THE NEW GOLDEN AGE.......it will play out as the social circles of history have for the last thousand years, that is simply a fact.  Briefly, I wrote about it the other day on my blog, let me add a couple more thoughts.
            Now as the news is bad---go to Raw Story and just read the headlines--I am happy that things are moving along in the direction of fast collapse.  This next year will be very sad in this country as the states one by one will face huge cuts in social safety net services.  Poverty and human suffering will reach a shocking level. It is necessary for the 'warriors' of the future to find their voices and the population unite against the wealthy elite and their greed.  It will be a swift change once it starts and it will affect the world.  Barta explains that US is not the power of the Roman armies but we are the economic power of the world and once the change happens here it will spread around the world.  Because of our history of democracy we will not have the bloody revolution of China (they were at 80% illiteracy, opium dens, poverty of unseen portions)
        Obama is too much the intellectual, we need a George Washington or a Eisenhower.   We, as citizens, will all drop labels for ourselves and others and unite to change the power structure of greed and ruling elite.  It will be a struggle but it is going to happen in the time frame of the next five years.

           In the meantime, Barta suggests people save don't spend.  Stay out of the stock market, make contact locally as much as possible.  Have a little gold or silver (I would say also an oversea Canadian bank account! maybe) Be debt free as much as possible. Be ready for the new golden age that is coming.

Guns, Germs and Steel

           I read this book a few years ago but in the past week I have watched the National Geographic program based on the book.  Of  course, it has been a few years since I read the book but I found the film wonderful and even more informative.

            Netflix has been a strange new force for our evenings in this house.  I have heard so many people talk about it for the last couple years but I am using it in a very personal way. I became addicted to Dr. Martin--British PBS show late last season and now have watched all of the past shows.  I am exploring all the documentaries Netflix offers.  Botany of Desire, The White Camel, a few biographic titles.  A line I will not forget was from Joan Baez bio, "I believe in humanity more than a flag". About nine years ago,  I was in a Trader Joe's store in Palo Alto one week-end afternoon and she was in there shopping.  No mistaking her.  She was with it seemed her sister, the family lives in the area I understand.  I have always loved her voice but now I understand her personality and what has been driving her for years.

           The trouble with me is that good comedy movies--I could use a laugh - are hard to come by in my opinion, like the Jack Nicholson stuff.  I have over the years gone to the movie houses to see them.  Today's teenage stories bore me so I have searched for foreign films or documentaries.  Fortunately, Netflix has a huge list.

        What's his name, the Dr. Martin guy, had a travel series on PBS about the islands around England.  His true personality is the opposite of his character he plays on Dr. Martin.  It was fun to see.

      



           

The New Golden Age

        The book with the above title is about the only positive thing I have seen, heard or read in a long time.  Ravi Batra is an unusual man because his education crosses so many difference disciplines of study.  His reputation of understanding economics, patterns of social change and reviewing the large picture of history is a rare talent.

         It makes perfect sense if you read his conclusion in the last chapter of the coming changes that are due in the United States.  Yesterday I heard that the Recovery Act covered 2009 and 2010 so many more social safety net programs will be dropped after January.  The individual states will have more and more cuts that will make poverty gallop across the nation.  In this new world a reality that will finally show all the Republicans, the Democratic, the Tea Party members, the liberals, the conservatives, the gays, the gun owners, the Christians, the Muslims, the immigrants, the rural southern and the high tech geek, we all are the victims of misrule by the acquisitve class, the ruling elite.  Up to this time, the ruling elite have been able to divide and distract the general population with issues so the low wages, the high debts, the injustices, the lack of health care, the unfair tax system were not the main issues.

       History is the map that shows how all of this will happen and some individuals from the warrior class will step forward and lead the way.  This is because as Batra says in the book"it will take extreme courage and valor as  no one in the elite class will surrender power on a silver platter...but their defeat is preordained by the law of social cycle."   

        This book  was published in 2007 and Barta predicts this upheaval could last from 2009 to 2016.  We surely live in interesting times.



         

Frost

      Tonight maybe the first night that my backyard will get frost.  We are to have a sunny day and a clear sky tonight.  I have the hoop portions in place for my two raised beds that I will garden this winter but I have to work on the cloth or plastic to cover them sometime during the day.  The little trick is all in the anchoring, the winds will be the undoing, I have found.

      This mornings news is particularly troubling.  The numbers of uninsured in this country is what, 54 million?  The GOP want to dismantle whatever is in place for the children of this country and a couple states want to do away with Medicare for seniors, one of them is Texas.   What happened to the sense of compassion or empathy with the citizens of this country?  Now the Catholic Church is debating if helping the poor is a liberal left wing idea at the up coming bishops meeting?  Bush is rewriting history on each show he appears about his motivation of going to war. 
Really, I have to ask myself, do I want to life out my life in this country.

       I am working on organizing my art studio so I have a place to zone out.  Anyone that has done something intensely in the creative field or in sports know the place that one goes to in the pursue their field.  I have to have everything in place, cleaned, subject matter ready, pencils and paints ready, my radio with my painting CD.  Yes, it is a habit of mine that I start each painting session with the same CD, have for years.  it is an old one of Carly Simons.  I move into a zone with her.  It has been a while and I have to get the eye, hand brain connection going again.  I have come to the conclusion the world doesn't need more paintings only I need the mental place of creating them.

First Hand

        During the last couple years I have heard about the sick state of our health care in this country from all the elections business and the health care bill. I seen those people stand in line and the microphone and telling the sad family stories. In the last six months with my brother's cancer I have seen some of this first hand.

         My feeling is that as a country we have decided that good health is the privilege of the wealthy.  It is not a right of average citizen.  The good religious view that God blessed the rich and the rest were not blessed by God so they are just left out.  It is about being worthy of more because you are of the wealthy class.  A child born into a household of means is cared for in sickness better, the price of care makes it so.

          The individuals of both political parties that govern us at all federal and some state levels are holding their positions  of because of insurance companies, the drug companies and the high tech medical companies. They dream up imaginary systems of holding back service by using words like 'observation' version 'admitting to the hospital' or drug availability defined by the 'donut hole'.  These are short hand for corruption of the system.  Or the most classic in the world, pass a bill in Washington, D.C. for all the citizens in the country but do not tax to pay for it, let the individual state fund the bill.

          The media has done a wonderful job of telling us we have the best care in the world.  None of the world organizations prove this out.  Our number in the developed world are mostly the lowest.  Now if we were a medieval society or a banana republic our number would make sense.

        

The next two years

          "All coconuts around the Gandhi museum were taken down." I smiled when I read that sentence.  I remember my trip to Hawaii and talking with a local at a lovely park she pointed out that all the coconuts are taken down regularly because of a death a baby years ago in a buggy.  The child was under one years of age out with a grandparent and a coconut killed the child.  The state passed a law to protect all walkers in the future.  I remember the story thinking as the pain of that grandparent.

         Currently, the ability to spread false stories in our media is so prevalent that I am seriously thinking of taking a two years vacation from the world.  The president's trip is the current one I am referring to in this case.  The only part of the story true is about the coconuts.

          Dr. Ravi Barta has had a life time of predicting the future in economics and social change, the list is long and is record speaks for itself.  This past week he said we are in for a very difficult for the two years ahead and then there will be a revolution of some sort in this country.  The crazy times will end and we will live in a golden age. I sure hope he is right.  This period of legal corruption, oil speculation, inhuman wars, living under false slogans will come to an end.  I have ordered his book THE NEW GOLDEN AGE to truly understand the events and so I will recognize the signs as they happen. 

 

Life and the gift

      I am in the middle of helping my brother find his way to the end of his life.  That make sound a little straight forward and cold but in fact he needs lots of help and I am experienced.  I have helped a couple other people I loved very much find the route.

      In a way, he is the most difficult--I have never heard of him reading my blog, so I feel comfortable writing this frankly but even if he read this I would not change a word.

       Someway in my thirties I figured out that each one of us have a contract  to live a lesson driven life. I, for instance, may have a issue with patiences or charity of time so this life is fulled with opportunity to give of my time or maybe generous of teaching. Even at my age, I am not sure that I have found the true purpose of this life or that whatever is ahead is more important than the past, imagining my growth and the possibilities are endless.

       During all of this, I believe the circle of probable people I have known from different time periods are all in my circle of people in this life.

       I suppose this short cuts some religious beliefs of my family and friends but then of course we all have many lives to live learn the secrets of the universe at our own rate. All of this is a reminder of that time is a gift, along with good health and the awareness to each day.