I turn 57 next month and after years of deep cynicism, especially during the Reagan and Bush Too years, in spite of things, I am again feeling cautiously hopeful (although I won't be waiting THIS time for a Woodstockian"bombers turn into butterflies" event!). The "change" I voted for seems minimal at best: it is still clearly, business-as-usual Empire building, the suffering and deaths of millions of folks like us in their own countries a given, a "cost of doing business", with the root causes of "terrorism" ignored. "They hate us for our freedoms and shopping malls".
But I feel and see and hear evidence of REAL change in American society. The urban farming instinct is becoming actualized by millions of us with veggie and herb gardens and fruit trees and backyard chickens. Lots of folks save and use their kitchen graywater. Many of us pee outdoors to avoid flushing potable water since human urine is a safe, sterile, home-produced liquid fertilizer.
Few people worship and slave over monocultural lawns. Laws that have ruined the lives of TENS OF MILLIONS of Americans for decades for enjoying the same Cannabis that Jefferson and Washington and Franklin enjoyed as they created America are being revoked.
Homosexual people like me are no longer pariahs or invisible, plus Bush and Cheney face arrest under war crimes charges if they go to quite a few countries.
So I am choosing to be optimistic in spite of it all, since I reside on a blue and green and brown hospitable planet that has supported me for 57 years, counting womb time. And I love my everchanging, ever-messy urban farm and home-as-art project in south Tampa. I am a very lucky man.
I know that 'The Beatles' was just a rock group from Liverpool, but I feel that they were a delightful, essential, integral catalyst that did much to stimulate a collective, societal and global subconcious tapping into a wellspring of growth and optimism and and self-determination that was long overdue. The classic "right place at the right time". For me, their messages and energy are relevant now. Plus I love their music. (koo koo ka CHOO!)
That urban farming is being looked into and explored and experienced by millions of American families is, for me, great cause for celebration and hoping that we continue to create a revolution based on organic food self-sufficiency in each of our own yards. Food is power...we can entrust its production and quality to the same governmental bodies that send our children off to wars of choice for profit based on lies, or we can grow it ourselves in our yards and our community gardens.
John
p.s. awesome video!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAb4x4BrhXk
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