Responsible Citizenship

I am going to steal something from a sermon I heard recently at Southside Presbyterian Church by Pastor Allison Harrington for this one. Why is it that we think that our only political responsibility is voting? We vote, and think we have done our job, think that we can blame problems on those we have voted into office. In fact, every choice we make on a daily basis is a political action. How we get around, where and how we do or do not spend our money, how we eat, what we do on vacation... these are all things that enforce political realities.

My roommates and I were talking the other day about Liberal Arts college students that protest immigration policies--and then go home and smoke marijuana (booo), increasing the demand for drug smugglers that reinforce negative opinions about people that cross the border. To be fair, there is no way to ensure consistent decision-making in a world of such moving targets. But I think it's really important to be educated about the implications of the way we live our lives. Understand where meat comes from, where potato chips come from, where the tomatoes in your Taco Bell burrito come from, (here you go Dad--) where your New Balance shoes and hundreds of straws come from. Whatever decision you make, you're free to make that decision, but you're also responsible for what happens because of that decision.

We all believe in different things, and that's ok, but please, please don't be ignorant about what your actions mean on a broader scale.

Fast for Our Families

A good friend and YAV serving in Miami sent me the information below in an e-mail. I urge you to act in support of this event:

On New Year's Day, a half dozen community members, including people facing deportation, entered St. Ann's Catholic Mission in Naranja, Florida (in south Miami Dade county) and began the Fast for Our Families. This means that they ate their last meal on New Year's Eve and will consume only liquids indefinitely until President Obama hears the voices of families separated by deportation. The fasters are making two simple requests to the Obama administration on behalf of our families:

1. That the Administration acts in its Executive Authority to SUSPEND raids, detentions, and deportations against immigrants with American families until Congress fixes our broken immigration system.

2. That the Administration sends the Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, down to South Dade to meet with the fasters to discuss what is happening in our community -- the daily, violent separation of families.

The fasters will continue the Fast for Our Families indefinitely and ask all who have watched families and communities be torn apart by raids, detentions, and deportations to join with them in solidarity actions and fasts.

Nationwide support for the Fast for Our Families is growing, but we need your support! How you can be involved:

1. Call President Obama and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano & ask them to stop the separation of our families. Their contact information and our policy document can be found at fastforfamilies@gmail.com. You can also call Secretary Napolitano right now at 866-587-3023.
2. Watch live streaming video of the Fasters every day at Noon from fastforfamilies.org .
3. Organize a 1-day Solidarity Fast or other action. If you are in the area, come spend the day with us. If you aren’t, do it from where you are. Let us know who you are, why you are joining us, and when you are fasting by emailing fastforfamilies@gmail.com. And if you want to join the indefinite fast, please let us know.
4. Forward this email to your friends and colleagues!
5. Make a contribution to support the families of the Fasters. You can send a check made out to WeCount! At Box 344116, Florida City, FL 33034. Put Fast for our Families in the memo.
6. Visit the Fasters at St. Ann Mission (13875 SW 264 St., Homestead, FL) - the visits they receive buoy their spirits. Let them know that their friends and neighbors care about them and support them.

Thank you for your support and your good works!

The Fast for Our Families

My roommate is awesome

My roommate Elsbeth works for BorderLinks, a great organization that works to educate people about border issues and immigration. She has taught me a lot, and I really value our conversations because it helps me connect the work I do to larger issues that also really interest me, including public health, international relations, economic disparity, education.... etc. Anyway, recently she told me a little bit about an e-mail conversation she had with a lady who did not understand why she was including discussions about sustainability during a trip that was focused on immigration. Elsbeth was nice enough to send me the conversation, in which she highlighted different sustainability efforts happening near Tucson and how they each played a role in immigration.

I wanted to share her insights with you to shed some light on that interconnectedness, and also introduce you to some of these sustainability experiments. Here is her response (thank you elsbeth!):

"I understand that the purpose of this immersion is on immigration issues and I would like to suggest that sustainability is an immigration issue. In our visits which deal with sustainable living, such as Just Coffee, DouglaPrieta Works, our time in Cascabel, and our visit with Brad Lancaster, we will be talking about sustainability in the context of immigration, because these two broad issues are intimately related.

Just Coffee is a solely Mexican venture that produces and promotes fair and just trade. By growing, producing, and selling the coffee from Mexico, more revenue is kept within the country that is then used for development of resources and people, thus causing less need for immigration. The organization was founded by a man who migrated from southern Mexico after he could no longer keep his coffee plantation afloat and who came to the border looking for work and to possibly migrate. Through a micro-credit loan, he and others were able to start Just Coffee and involve families in southern Mexico and on the border so that less people feel the push and pull to migrate. During our talk, we will hear this story repeated. www.justcoffee.org

DouglaPrieta Works functions along the same lines. One of the biggest reasons for immigration is the lack of jobs and resources for people. What DouglaPrieta tries to do is to provide important skills for people so that they can find and maintain jobs in Mexico and not have to immigrate. They offer workshops in carpentry, sewing, computers, permaculture, and much more. The director is especially interested in permaculture because of its ability to provide nutritious food, a source of income, and the building of community. douglaprietaworks.org

Cascabel provides the opportunity to experience an alternative lifestyle to the one that most Americans live in. Our delegation will offer a lot of perspectives and experiences and we will hopefully be confronted with the fact that a lot of the choices and decisions that we make affect others and ultimately lead to forced migration, especially in Mexico. The time in Cascabel offers us an opportunity to see other ways of living and to challenge our own understanding.

Brad Lancaster has been working on sustainable living programs for a long time and again offers alternatives to the norms that we see in U.S. society. A major hope of BorderLinks delegations is for participants to process the experience and to learn what it means for them and how they can take it back to their communities and incorportate what they have learned into their own lives. Brad challenges us to consider our actions and decisions and to change how we interact with others and with nature.

I hope this clarifies some ideas. I am happy to discuss this in greater depth."

The decisions we make, as Americans, have broad impact on the world. What can you do to help?

Make some Focaccia!

I made this while I was home for Christmas. Making bread is really really fun and this is an easy bread to make. Make this bread and you'll make friends!

From the "Dairy Hollow House Soup and Bread: A Country Inn Cookbook" by Crescent Dragonwagon. Yep, Crescent Dragonwagon.

What you need:

1 1/4 cups of water

3 tablespoons of dried rosemary

1 tablespoon of honey

1 tablespoon of active dry yeast

1 teaspoon of salt

4 tablespoons of olive oil

2 1/2 to 3 cups of unbleached, all-purpose flour

1 large egg yolk

1 teaspoon of water

Course salt

How to make it:

1. Boil water and pour it over 1 tablespoon of rosemary. Wait until it cools to luke warm, then strain and discard the rosemary.

2. Pour the rosemary water into a mixing bowl. Stir in the honey, sprinkle the yeast over the top and let stand until foamy, 5-10 minutes. Stir in the salt, 1 tablespoon of the oil, then add enough of the flour to make a kneadable dough.

3. Knead the dough on a lightly floured surface until smooth and elastic, 5-8 minutes. Coat a large bowl with a few drops of olive oil, add the dough, then turn to coat all sides. Cover with a clean cloth and then let rise until double in bulk, about 1 hour.

4. Coat a 14 x 12 inch baking pan with another few drops of the olive oil. Punch the dough down and put it in the oil pan. Pat, stretch and pull it to cover the bottom. Dimple the surface with your fingertips.

5. Beat together the egg yolk, 1 tablespoon of oil and 1 teaspoon of water; brush this mixture over the dough. Drizzle with remaining oil, sprinkle with remaining 2 tablespoons of rosemary and a little course salt. Cover and let rise until double in bulk, about 45 minutes.

6. About 30 minutes into the final rise, pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees.

7. Bake the bread until golden and crusty, about 25 minutes. Let cool slightly in the pan, then remove to a wire rack.

Then make some black bean hummus to dip it in. Yum.

Pictures!

Here are some pictures from the last week. Yay for the desert!

Sunset from Alyce's house

I love the sun, and saguaros

Tucson! From up high

Somewhere down there is the Marana Farm, a really awesome place.

Hiking in the wash. So much sun.

Mountains are the only thing that exist in the whole world.

The Hard Way

Is there anything more fun than doing things the hard way? I have begun embracing the hard way of doing things, and let me tell you, I am a convert.

What do I mean by this? Biking instead of driving. Writing letters instead of text messages. Singing or playing instruments instead of listening to a CD. Baking instead of going out to eat. Growing instead of shopping. Reading instead of watching the movie.

Of course, I'm sure you all agree with me-- but who has time for all of that, right? We'd all love to cook gourmet meals every night, but there is so much going on. Right? I know for a long time my life was like that. I ate cereal for dinner every night because I got home at 9 p.m.--and what else would you eat at 9 p.m? I was so exhausted from working that I didn't have the energy to go hiking or biking; all I wanted to do was watch NCIS.

But if we know what things make us happy, what else could possibly be more important? It can be really hard. But why even eat if you're going to eat something that doesn't feed you? Why just get somewhere quickly, when you could enjoy the journey of getting there? Doing things quickly and efficiently implies that some parts of life are less important than others, or "wasted time." But it's all part of your life, so why not do things the hard way and see what you might learn from it? Make time for things. It's your life, you get to choose what you do with your time.

My favorite part about gardening

I have really been loving my job so far, especially the mornings I spend in the garden. My favorite part about gardening is that it requires me to really be present in what I am doing--this is something that has greatly changed my views about the way I live.

I remember the experience that led to this revelation. I was checking the greens for cabbage loopers, examining each leaf and spraying with soapy water. After a thorough approach to the first few plants, I started trying to think up more efficient ways to accomplish the task. Would it work if I only looked down into the folds of the plant? Or if I only turned over the leaves that had bites taken out of them? I was taking much too long at this, and there had to be a way to quicken the pace.

The problem was that I am used to planning ahead in everything I do; I'm thinking ahead to the next thing I have to do before I am done with the previous. All the sudden it struck me-- if I missed one cabbage looper, it would eat the other leaves, and it would have been a waste of time to do this work at all. If I'm not trying my best on any task in the garden, if I'm speedy at it, it's not worth doing at all. There will be a long list of maintenance tasks day after day whether I take a long time or a short time inspecting for pests, so why not put forth due diligence and be thorough?

Working in a garden is unlike anything else I do because I'm not attached to the technology that allows me to multitask. I'm not interrupted by e-mails or cell phone calls. The only thing I have to do when I am out in the garden is do a good job at whatever task I'm given.

And the more I think about it, why do anything in life if I don't do it as best I can? If I cannot think of a compelling enough reason to do something the best I can without being distracted, is it worth doing at all?

This might sound so elementary. But for me, it was a life-changing discovery. I have always been a pretty hard worker, but I'm also pretty easily distracted. Striving to be present in everything I do has been extremely freeing for me. I stop worrying, I stop planning--I just do and be. And I have gotten much more fulfillment and enjoyment out of everything because of that.