Jodhaa Akbar for Christmas

Yes, I have put up another ad for the Christmas season. I have no problem promoting Amazon, because I totally support reading. I love movies too and you can buy them there as well. In fact, I just watched an incredible movie, one of the most beautiful films I have ever seen. I will buy a copy for sure.

It's from India and is in an Indian language with English or Arabic subtitles. It is 3 hours and 45 minutes yet I was sorry to see it end. Jodhaa Akbar is based on the lives of real people and takes place during an opulent period in Indian history.

The music, costumes, and sets are so incredible. It made me want to be young and in love for the first time. Of course, in their case, it helps that they were the richest people in the land as well.

Basically the Emperor Akbar, a Muslim, marries Jodhaa, a Hindu princess during a time when there was much war and strife around issues of land and religion. Yet, Akbar allows her to keep her own religion and culture while living in a Muslim palace. In fact, in time he rules that there will be total religious tolerance in his empire.

Perhaps India needs to go back to its own history (and so do we Americans) to remember these founding principles of tolerance and acceptance. They both respect each other and therefore expand themselves and learn new ways of being, without sacrificing their own traditions. Others try to force them to reject or limit, but they don't go along with that. Instead their love grows as they come to understand each other more. Inspiring.

Grateful for my childhood

Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. Mine turned out much better than I expected. I knew the family I was visiting had a little girl, but I did not know about the boy. They were the most delightful, intelligent and well-mannered kids I have met in years. Victoria and Morgun (supposed to be Morgan, but dad was so worn out after the whole birth thing, he couldn't write straight when he filled out the paperwork). I guess the hospital staff didn't question it. Duh! I guess they are so used to misspelling or 'creative' spellings of names, they don't even notice anymore.

And they had two dachshunds that were the sweetest little things. I got my face washed more times than I care to count. Yes, I know their mouths are "clean", but that's hard to remember when you see where else they've been. Midway in the day they were lolling across my body on their backs gazing up at me in such an adorable way.

Earlier, as I was getting ready to go in the morning, I noticed a commotion out on the highway. Many cars and people. I thought perhaps the neighbor up the road was having a big dinner and people were parking along the highway. But no, it was another car off the road and in the ditch. They were trying to help before the CHP came. Funny, I hadn't heard this one go off. Usually there's a squealing of tires then some type of crash. I write a about this on Hamida the Herbalist, Issue of the Week for last week.

I guess no one was hurt as they did not call the police. It made me even more careful driving that day.

We had the usual Thanksgiving dishes, including pumpkin pie made from scratch.
Throughout the day I thought about Thanksgivings past. This has always been my favorite holiday, but not necessarily because of what happened. I just liked it, that's all.

Since my parents divorced when I was around 7 or so, and they both felt I should get the benefit of both of them, they decided that each year they would schedule the holidays in advance. One year Dad got me for Thanksgiving, Mom for Christmas - etc. The next year they would switch.

I always preferred Dad for Thanksgiving, since he married another "American" and they would have "real Thanksgiving". That is, turkey, dressing, yams, pumpkin pie. My mother's people would have "Italian Thanksgiving" which meant tons of food, but no turkey or dressing. Yams? No way. It was more like roast beef with lots of garlic and a mountain of spaghetti.

For Christmas, Mom was best since her family was so huge and I had so many cousins, it meant I got a ton of presents. If I was not going to be there, it seemed I got fewer presents. Also, we would spend ALL DAY eating! I mean it. We'd get to grandma's around noon (after Church) and stay at the table until 10pm or so. We usually had two meals plus desserts, nuts, fruit etc.

Between meals, the men would go out to smoke and play horseshoes, or stay in and play cards, while the women cleaned up the first set of dishes and argued. Us kids would go outside and try to get grandpa's bull the chase us out in the field, then hope to run back through the huge gate in time. What fun! Or we might try to play "baseball" out in the yard near the barn. You had to be careful not to end up in the cesspool, that was inconveniently situated in the yard. We mostly used the outhouse attached to the barn for a toilet, so the cesspool was not as bad as it might have been. We thought nothing of this. It had a structure consisting of mountains of lumber over the top. The only reason I ever knew there was a cesspool there at all was when something went wrong one time and my uncles had to uncover it and fix something - a pump I guess.

Even though I was an only child until my mother remarried and had another daughter, I was part of a huge extended Italian (Sicilian) family. We spent most of our lives visiting each other. There was always something. Holidays, birthdays, showers, weddings, baptisms, then later funerals. My grandparents never spoke English even though they were in this country for nearly 75 years. They had green cards.

I am so grateful I grew up like this. I feel so fortunate. It makes it very difficult to handle holidays now, however. It doesn't feel right unless there are at least 20 people at the table.

At Dad's American Thanksgiving, I had all the great traditional food. When my first step-mother was around, we usually went to her sister's house. They "had money" so they really did it up right. Even the booze they drank was expensive. They had a huge house and their kids, my step-cousins had every great toy you could want.

I'll never forget the year step-mother no.1 made dinner at their house in Fremont. I was already on my own by then and my best friend from high school, who was now my college housemate was with me. Her parents had gone to Texas for the holiday and she did not want to go, so she came with me. Oh God! Dinner was to be around 2, so we went over there around noon. Step-mother no.1 as still in her bathrobe, drunk and stuffing the turkey. We realized it would be hours before dinner was ready, so we drove over to my aunt Annie's in Livermore where my mother was for the day. We ate there and hung out for awhile. Then we went back to Dad's where things were moving along. We had a few drinks to ease the pain. Finally, we ate. Ugh! Misery. Raw turkey. Finally we got out of there. Before we went home, we stopped at my aunt Frances' in Hayward and, of course, ate there. We had eaten 3 Thanksgiving dinners that day!

Whenever I begin to feel sorry for myself - living alone, no children, I think back on that day. All of it. The bounty of food, the family, the dysfunction, the driving around trying to appease all my relatives, the embarrassment of having my friend see that part of my life, etc. and I am grateful that at least I did not duplicate the dysfunction. My father married again. That time to another alcoholic and the last Thanksgiving I had with him, he had to cook it all himself because she was so bad off. My Dad never cooked, but he wanted "a real Thanksgiving" so much he went way out of his comfort zone to try to make it work. Bless his heart.

I know my parents did the best they could. They were the generations that came after the immigrant generation. Children of immigrants who were between cultures. Trying to fit in - "be American". Since my father's parents came here single to work and planned to return 'home', they learned English. WWI broke out and they had to stay here. They met and married. They were from two different countries - Ukraine and Poland.

My mother's parents came from the same village in Sicily. They were married with two children when they came to the U.S. There were lots of Italians in S.F. already, so they could work without having to learn English. They were not forced to assimilate, so they didn't. They were able to retain much of their traditional culture all of their lives.

I knew all my grandparents and learned a lot from them. I am grateful for this as well. I miss them all.

Wishful thinking....

Sorry I was wrong about Obama's birth year. He was born in 1961, not 1964. But, the Voting Rights Act that Lyndon Johnson signed was in 1964 and it did cause another uprising especially in the South as thousands of people tried to register to vote.

Someone emailed me that Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed in 1964 and that is wrong. He was killed in 1968 the same year as Bobby Kennedy. I remember both events very well.

After Nixon was elected, I stopped voting for nearly 20 years. My friends and I all expected that Nixon would put us in concentration camps. Many of my friends were arrested for their anti-war activities - on other pretexts. "The Movement" went underground. Many just gave up. Others became more militant.

44 Years Ago... and now Obama the 44th President!

I have decided that I'm taking Sunday off. Getting out, going for a ride, visiting friends, going for a long walk, whatever. This blogging thing can become quite addictive and when you add two on line classes to it and an on line business.... I'm definitely becoming a dull girl. More like a 'duh' girl. Really. I've gotten so I can hardly speak sometimes.

So, this past Sunday, I went to a Wellness Expo in Sonoma, then out to dinner at East West Cafe in Santa Rosa, then to a movie.

The Wellness Expo was 'research and development' since Hamida the Herbalist must keep up with what's going on. I saw many old friends and made some new ones. Of course, Linda Ann was there with her incredible and magical jewels. She is also a Feng Shui practitioner and I know her jewelry is blessed. It emanates such loving and compassionate energy. Go see at her website.

There were way too many 'readers' of various types. Some were downright scary looking. SO SERIOUS! Some sat there looking like they were trying so hard to connect to another world, it almost made me laugh. And what's so bad about that is... that I believe in these things. Unfortunately there are too many people trying to make it 'look' so mysterious when actually it is perfectly normal and natural.

After dinner, I went to see The Secret Life of Bees, a great movie made from an even greater book. It has been my experience that movies rarely are as good as the book they came from, and, sorry to say, it was also true in this case. I was disappointed with the movie. But even though I anticipated this possibility, I wanted to see it on the big screen.

One thing that I realized while I watched the movie that I hadn't gotten when I read the book is that when Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights act in July of 1964, that was a month before Obama was born! Amazing! It also struck me that it was 44 years ago and Obama is the 44th president!

Part of the movie is about racism in South Carolina during that period and how the voting rights act caused uprisings in the South. Here we are 44 years later with an African-American president and a bunch of 'stuff' has been stirred up again. What I fail to understand is how the granting of civil rights to any group of people takes away from others? If one is free, aren't we all free?

Hope Restored

Today I am so proud of America. We finally did something right!

I remember as a child listening to the radio before going to school and hearing all what was going on in Little Rock, Arkansas. It hit me so hard I dreaded driving through there 23 years later. Then Birmingham, Alabama and Mississippi and all those terrible things that happened in the 50's.

My mother taught me to accept people and I couldn't understand what was going on. It set me on a path to work for civil rights, sometimes actively, sometimes behind the scenes by my example.

When I was 12, my best friends and I campaigned for Kennedy by holding signs at a rally downtown Hayward when Nixon came to give a speech. A man came up and offered us a dime to leave.

When Kennedy created the Peace Corps, I decided that some day I would go and I did. I was 27 and I was an ESL teacher. I went to Zaire and taught at the University in Lubumbashi. I have to admit, I learned more than I taught. It was a challenge to be in the minority, but it gave me a little insight into how it feels.

Even though I was expecting to return to the U.S., I remembered the story of my grandmother who only planned to come to America for a couple years to earn money to send back to her parents, then return home. WWI broke out and she was not able to return to her family in Poland and had to make a life here. So... I was preparing myself for the same thing. What if I couldn't go "home" and had to stay there and make a new home?

That was a long time ago, but through the years, whenever I was in a position to stand up for someone, challenge racism, or offer support, I have done so.

When I lived in Louisiana, I came up against racism on a regular basis. It shocked me. Here it was the 80's and this XXXX was still going on. I really couldn't believe it. Having lived there and seeing it for myself, the way people were treated after Katrina didn't surprise me. The only difference was that the rest of America saw it too, finally. Louisiana was the most backwards place I had ever lived. It was like they were in a time warp.

Let's face it folks, there hasn't been much to celebrate lately. But this election of Obama has made me so happy. I believe, if nothing else, it has inspired young people and that is the most important thing anyone can do.

Election day I found out that my polls were closed and I was supposed to vote by mail. I don't like voting by mail, so when the ballot came, I thought I had an option, so I tore it up. Fortunately, I was outside when my neighbor was walking her dogs and we discussed the ads that Google posted without my knowledge or consent.

KPFA was broadcasting about election issues and gave out a hotline number if we had problems. So I called and found out that I had to drive 15 miles to the County Center and the Registrar of Voters Office. I did it because it was too important to miss. Even though I felt sure my one vote would not make that much difference, I wanted to be a part of history.

I am so glad I lived long enough to see this.

Someone said something that night that was very significant:

Rosa Parks sat so that Martin could march.
Martin marched so that Obama could run.
Obama ran so that my children can fly.

ANNOUNCEMENT: I DO NOT SUPPORT THAT GOOGLE AD!

Dear Friends and Readers
I have been out of town for two days and I see that Google has taken the opportunity to post an ad that I DO NOT SUPPORT. I removed it from this site and must now go to my other sites to see if it is there also. I am so sorry this happened. If any of you have been following me, especially on Wise Women of the West, which is more personal, you know that I accept everyone. We are All One. Where ever there is Love, it is a Holy Union and sanctified.

Please forgive me for not knowing about this sooner, but I was at the 2012 Conference in San Francisco and just had all my paradigms updated.

Whatever Floats Your Boat

I haven't been posting this week except for my Issue of the Week on my herbal blog because my 'sweetie' has been visiting from Mexico where he lives on his boat. This the fulfillment of his life's dream. He wanted me to go with him, but I couldn't hack living on a boat. So.... I've been down there twice this year and he's been up here twice.

Anyway, I wanted to write a bit about the conference I'm going to in San Francisco Halloween weekend. 2012 Conference, San Francisco - Shift Happens.

Many years ago, I was working on a PhD. in Mayan Studies at Tulane University in New Orleans. I have been interested in the Maya for at least 40 years. I taught courses on Mayan Hieroglyphs and Mayan Culture through the Extension program at Sonoma State University.

Because of my academic background, I was always skeptical of "2012" stuff. I knew it was the end of a calender period of 5125 years, but it was the end of a cycle within many many cycles and so, as such, no more significant than the end of a millennium for us. Of course, each time a millennium ends, people in modern culture have predicted an 'end of the world'.

I'm not sure why I decided to check out a book by John Major Jenkins entitled 'Maya Cosmogenesis: 2012'. I don't recall the chain of events right now. This led me to an Internet search, which led me to this conference, which I have decided to attend.

The book is incredible. He has integrated the anthropological and archaeological information with astronomy and some 'New Age' teachings. In some cases, he makes logical leaps that are not necessarily appropriate, but in the long run, his results make total sense to me.

He makes the case that the Maya knew about the precession of the equinoxes and rather than designing their calender on a historical or mythological beginning, they worked backwards from an 'end date', Dec. 21, 2012. This is when the Sun will line up with the Galactic Center of our Milky Way Galaxy and this will be visible just before sunrise at particular latitudes.

His argument is well backed up by data and it is convincing. So what? you might well say. Scientists have determined that the center of our galaxy is a 'black hole'.

Wikipedia has this to say:
"A black hole is a theoretical region of space in which the gravitational field is so powerful that nothing, not even electromagnetic radiation (e.g. visible light), can escape its pull after having fallen past its event horizon. The term derives from the fact that the absorption of visible light renders the hole's interior invisible, and indistinguishable from the black space around it."

The Maya saw this black hole as the womb of the Great Mother, thus the place of Creation. The Sun was the Father. Thus when the Sun and the GC came together, Creation happened. This occurs every 26,000 years.

In light of this information and the scientific data regarding black holes, we may well ask ourselves what will happen. According to Jenkins, it is not just a finite period of one day, but rather of years leading up to and following the actual alignment. We are already in that period of years. In addition, in Mayan calendrics, time cycles overlap. They don't just end and begin. It is not 2007 on Dec. 31 and 2008 on Jan. 1. Rather there is a period of time toward the end of the year that overlaps with the beginning of the next year. Time is seen as cyclic, not linear.

Could all the upheaval that is occurring in society at this time be part of the "Shift"? I think so. Many institutions have been under scrutiny and some are crumbling or changing. Many people are living in fear these days about their future. The Earth itself is undergoing rapid change due to Global Warming. Where will it all lead?

I invite your comments.