another vegas story

I have to keep writing about Vegas... but I'm momentarily blank. One story: I stopped at a gas station, where a perfectly nice attendant saw my passport (since I had lost my other ID). We chatted casually and he said, "You know, if Obama has his way with the immigration bill, we'll all have to have these when we go between states.
"Obama is a COMMUNIST. The Republicans tried to warn us...and I voted for him anyway. And now I see they're right."

"Hmmm..." I replied "You know, a lot of people say things about his bills that aren't exactly true."

"No, I read it myself. I read the whole thing."

I thanked him and ran out of there.

What was he talking about? There is no immigration bill right now and there's no way that's true. I will criticize Obama plenty (for being too similar to past presidents), but there is no way he has interest in any of those things the man claimed. It was nuts, but I am told this is typical for Nevada. Hmmm....

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I had a great realization yesterday. R feels the same. Now that we know our time is limited, we love Ithaca! We love how we can walk everywhere, from the bar to a friend's house to home. Almost everyone is nice. It is beautiful. I have a nice routine where I go to the coops regularly. There are lots of concerned people trying to improve things (not so many, but compared to most places). I guess it takes a very long time to become comfortable in a new place.

Vegas--part 1

Great trip to Las Vegas area. I'm waiting to get photos from friends.

Two friends and I camped in Red Red Canyon, which was gorgeous. Sadly, it was not hot, but the landscape was amazing. It was dry (of course, the desert!), windy, with beautiful land formations. One friend is a fan of natural history and was able to explain the origin of the area. We were also able to stay away from the hustle and bustle of the Vegas strip. We spent some time there, enough to know what it was all about, but I didn't gamble or drink there at all. We did go to the spa with our friends who were staying at the hotel--they assumed we were too, so we got spa access for only $10: use of bathrobe and slippers, sauna, hot tub, showers, free juices/waters and fruit.

spring...

Ithaca is so nice now that I know my time is limited. It always was, but now I'm really enjoying it all. The beautiful sunsets, the gorges, the greenery, the blossoms, all the gardens in people's yards.

Weds I go to Nevada! We arrive late, so we're staying in a hostel the first night, but the next three nights will be spent camping in a nearby state park! I wish it were warmer (it will get down to the 50s at night), but it will be fun. The best thing about going to the Tree of Life was seeing the mountainous desert, so I'm excited to see a new kind of desert (flat? non-mountainous?).

A lady (teacher) is blogging about the school lunch at her school here. Ahhh, brings me back to the days of picking at my lunch and throwing it away, coming back to class hungrier than I started, and getting a nice huge snack as soon as I came home. Obviously I am spoiled, to have experienced self-imposed hunger. But really... the lunches are no good.

I'm watching the movie Yoga, Inc (free on Hulu.com). There is this part of me that wants to know how to be snobby about yoga--I am doing it for the right reasons, and everyone else is stupid and materialistic. So instead, I'm becoming spiritually materialistic, eh? Or maybe it's just interesting and it makes sense that it would get popular in that way in this country. It loses a lot when it becomes a fitness routine, but then people who are interested can pursue more. So maybe this is just how it goes. It's interesting enough.

This makes me not interested in Bikram yoga, though. I would do the practice (sounds too hot for me though), but I'm not a fan of copyrighting poses and all that.

I'm officially sick. Not horribly so, but sneezing and coughing and all that jazz. But today is sunny again, and hopefully warmer. The greyness in Ithaca just weighs so heavily...

Despite the sickness, I'm doing spring cleaning. Getting rid of all the junk in the house. I've been a spice pack rat in the kitchen and a clothing pack rat in the bedroom.

Mmm, I am eating my red bell peppers that I froze last fall. I keep avoiding them, thinking they will be soggy, but they are actually really good once defrosted. It's nice to know exactly where they came from, and how they were grown. We put them on pizza a few nights ago (half Daiya vegan cheese, half nothing) and it was surprisingly good.

Mmmm, I took the Fantastic Foods whole grain veggies burger mix and added spinach... too salty but sooo good. A great brunch to be having right now.

It's gray again but the trees are budding and flowers are popping up from bulbs in the ground. Spring is coming! Next weekend I go to NYC and the weekend after that, Vegas. So, time for spring cleaning. I'm going to go through all my clothing and books and papers, and decide what I want.

A fellow MS student had his defense today. I saw his presentation that proceeded the defense; it was on cover crops. At the party afterwards (yes, he passed!), I thought about how nice it is in some ways to be in an academic environment. We're taught to think clearly, to understand really complex things and be able to answer questions about our methods in a straightforward manner. We have the same jargon, even if we come from different biological disciplines (NA=nucleic acid, AA=amino acid, etc). But, I guess I still kind of don't see the point in the end. It doesn't solve political, spiritual or environmental problems, only technical ones. Science can be interesting, and teach some things, but I don't think it helps make people happy in the long run. Interacting with our environment rather than studying it, and accepting things instead of fighting them, would do so much more. So, pros and cons, but what is, is for the moment.

So I am reading about samskaras. One description of the cycle is this:
Samskaras (subtle impressions) form part and parcel of the cycle of Karma. The cycle of Karma is this: Action (karma) --> Impression (samskara) --> Tendency (vasana) --> Thought Pattern (vritti) --> Action (karma).

So we cycle round and round. The different forms of yoga are supposed to act on various levels. With karma yoga, you work on the level of action---helping yourself by helping others. Meditation and poses work to clear out the internally-ingrained patterns. I am going to keep reading about this. I see my patterns spin round and round, repeating over and over again. They have to play out but you can change what happens after.

More things from the man that works with indigenous medicine yesterday--

--He has been working to inform nurses about the various indigenous systems of medicine, so that people can get the best of both worlds (complementary medicine). I think that is good because as suspicious I am of conventional medicine, it does certain things really well: mainly acute situations, also disease prevention with vaccines and correcting single-nutrient deficiencies (I suppose that can be an acute issue, depending).
--My friend asked him what to do about stress, and he went over a number of things. He said meditation is very good and cleansing, but stress drains energy and meditation won't give the energy we need. A few things he mentioned: eating good food (he said to try avoiding meat for three months, and avoid junk--just real basic advice, nothing too strict), exercising hard daily so the body feels that it is alive, certain plant medicines, etc.
--Every action causes a reaction.
--Other things: this reality is just one of many, to think this is all there is is a delusion, ritual is important, talk to plants and thank them and if you have a question you should ask and listen for the answer.
--He told a story about a traditional healing woman he was learning from. He asked her if wormwood would work for some horrible parasitic worms many children in the village had. She said, ask the plant. He thought she was crazy, but for three months, he went to the plant everyday and asked it. No answer. He gave it to the children anyway. Their illness (potentially fatal) were cured. He went to the woman and complained that the plant hadn't said anything. She said, you fool, what happened? The children got better. The plant spoke through the children. Don't ignore that.
--He got a PhD and went to Uganda. His degree was worth nothing there and he knew nothing. He went to Peru, it meant even less. in Mexico (his home), it was even more true.
--Remember the people always, and their traditions, and make sure your work has relevance to that. It was amazing to hear such things at Cornell, in the art of academia.

I actually went running that day, pushing myself, because of what he said. I have been exercising, but nothing very hard, and moderate exercise doesn't have the same psychological effect that hard exercise does.
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Spring is really here and we have had a few days of sun! I feel light inside like I haven't for a long time. Additionally, one of my classes "Nutrient Fertility in Agro-ecosystems", is the best I've had. It puts everything I've learned together and the teacher is focused more on teaching/learning/understanding than grades. He's also getting to be somewhat of a bigwig. He works with biochar, which helps increase the capacity of old, weathered soils (such as found in the Global South) to hold onto nutrients and sequester carbon for climate change mitigation.
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I'm going to Las Vegas in a couple weeks with some other grad students. I'm really lucky because one of the others going is very cheap, and another is not into glitz and glamour--so the three of us will be camping out in the desert for all three nights! I'm really excited. I'm bad at camping, my back gets sore and I won't sleep well (I fully admit that civilization has made me soft). But I much prefer the beauty of the Vegas desert to the excesses of that city. It will be great.

I've been watching my patterns a lot. I feel a lot better since I decided to stop fighting them. "Resistance to resistance is still resistance". I've been reading about samskaras...embedded impressions. I was going to write about that.

But something more interesting happened today. There was a speaker from Mexico that is an academic but works with indigenous medicine. He is working to integrate native healing methods (plant knowledge) with standard scientific medicine. He was amazing.

He talked about how there are many realities, and this is only one dimension--don't get too caught up in it. The school system is problematic in many ways--you consume book after book, and become full of books. But what does that get you, as far as truth? The book isn't reality, it's the author's imagination. Three months after he got his PhD, he went to Uganda, and his knowledge was worthless. He went to Peru, the same. He went to Mexico, even more so. It is not reality.

He gave examples of all the different diseases they were able to heal with plants. He talked about how the whole body is sick, not just one part, because it is all connected. The finger is not sick. If the finger is sick, the whole body is sick. For so many diseases, there is no pathogen. The top diseases are cancer, heart attack, depression, lupus, etc--and what is sick? The person is sick. There is no pathogen.

One professor asked him if he had considered the placebo effect. He said that of course they considered it, that was the point. The act of having another person heal you is in itself a great thing (connecting with another human, having that caring), and since so many diseases are from sickness of self, that anything that is heals psychologically IS important. All is integrated.

I am going to watch a movie he was in, about indigenous medicines. He noted that there are great similarities between the medicinal systems of Mexico (there are many, since there were many peoples there before) and other systems throughout the world: Tibetan, Chinese, etc.

Spring is here (sunny and 45), and the melting snow is feeding into the streams and gorges. Spring and summer are the best times to be in Ithaca... actually, the fall is great, too, because of all the tree leaves in the valley. It's good to know I won't have another winter here--just the beginning.

I'm starting to think about jobs but still have little idea of what the possibilities will be. We shall see...

From Post Secret.

I'm realizing how few consequences there are in the day-to-day life of an American. That's why it's so hard not to be wasteful. I broke my iPod charger for the second time. Why? I was lazy and didn't take good care of it, again, so it doesn't work. So what, I thought. I bought a new one for cheap online. It was needlessly wasteful, but there were no consequences in the short-term, none that I could see at all. In that sense, it would be useful for people to have some idea of karma. When you think about everything affected by your actions, it makes you more likely to choose the right action in a circumstance.

word choice

Half of everything at this school has the word "sustainability" attached. It's a buzzword that will get you grants and make it look like you are being environmentally conscious, whether or not you are. It's gotten to the point where the word doesn't get past the filters in my brain. Instead of scanning for key words in event summaries, I'm always looking to see if there will be actual substance or not. Too bad people are afraid to talk about interconnectedness, environmentalism and the like.

Interestingly enough, factory farms love co-opting this language, as well. In the same way they claim that no one cares about cows/chickens more than them, no one cares about the earth more than these giant farms. The funny thing is, they actually have a point. Their argument is that factory farms (though they detest the term) are far better because they requires less land for more animals. This is absolutely true. With so many people demanding meat on a daily basis (often multiple times), free range meat will not go far, and would have to expand on to far more land. Of course, it's still cruel and uses far more resources than a plant-based diet. But their use of the word is technically correct, in their context.

I've been thinking about aging lately. I would like to be in my 50s and 60s and stay there forever. It sounds like such a nice age. You're sort of old, but not really old. No pregnancy worries, you're done raising your kids. You have the freedom of the 20s but much more wisdom. The body is not what it used to be, but that's a great way to practice grace and acceptance.

The last week of March (somehow it is March already) I am going to Vegas with my school trip. So lots of work to get done by then. I'll have a committee meeting.