I am reading one of those truly great books, Memo to the President Elect by Madeline Albright. As much as I like fiction to take me away to another world, I also really love to learn. This is an inside view to the Oval Office that is as good as the TV series West Wing without the fiction and the actors.

Along with most people who Monday-morning-quarterback about how to run the government with their friends of like mind, I rarely deal with the full reality of the necessary checks and balances of the presidency because I only guessed at scope of it all. One can only guess at the bureaucracy and slowly turning wheels and ambitious groups and individuals the president needs to deal with. Well, this book debunks my belief that I knew much about politics, foreign affairs and how the world works; this is a major educative tool and I loving it because I’m learning a very important piece of being an American, and it is a very interesting read. I always knew I never wanted the job of President of the United States and Memo confirms it.

After I’ve read a portion of this book, my mind takes me to wondering why we can’t all have our own brilliant Madeline Albright writing a “How To” manual guiding us through life’s complexities, pointing out pitfalls and how to work with difficult people in life and career. Although we have many self-help and how-to books out there, I’ve had to wade through many authors who see the world on a smaller scale or are of a certain bias or have an agenda or are just unimaginative in their approach to a subject. No wiggle room for being human, which means being an individual. No one has the same mind, circumstances or willingness to comply with someone else’s ideas or ideals. Sometimes I would find a book that really helps but most of the time I take a few paragraphs from each to fit my life at the moment. I am a multi-faceted person and make connections that most people don’t even want to, when faced with an important choice or problem.

I sincerely hope our future president reads this book as many times as it takes for him or her to realize how humane and logical Ms. Albright is. She discusses what’s behind the scenes, suggests what would be helpful, and while directed, has enough open ends to allow for human-ness, for differences and for possibilities. It is these qualities in this book that makes me wish for a life manual for myself. Perhaps I’d have to write it.

The Farm Bill

            A complete misnomer, perhaps deliberately.  This is a very important bill going through the final phases in congress.  It should really be called The Food Bill, and then, perhaps, more people would be interested in changing it to better fit the eating constitutuants.  This bill is where our government gets to take our tax dollars and give it to the richest corporations that grow our food.  They grow our food on chemically fertilized (which means depleted) soil.  If the vitamins and minerals are not in the soil, they will not be in the plant.  Then, pesticides are used in huge quantities, which the plants take in through their leaves and roots (only what remains on the outside of the plant can be washed off), and so do the animals we eat.  This chemical soup is oil-based and the run-off gets into our water supply.  The largest food/chemical corporation, Monsanto, uses it’s genetically modified seeds (GMO) which means they take genes from other species and splice them into the plant’s DNA.  An example is tomatoes, which have frog genes spliced in as a built-in pesticide.  No one knows what effect this will have on us in the long run – cancer? Infertility? our DNA? – we are just the Guinea Pigs for this experiment.  Could these pesticides be killing our honey bees vital to farmers to fertilize the plants???

            That said, small farms get a very small percentage of this corporate welfare, and organic farmers even less.  This is why some foods (wheat, corn) are so cheap and why the animals that are fed this food that is unnatural to grazers like cattle is cheap, and foods that are not subsidized by you and me is so expensive.    Eating a healthy diet is quite expensive.  While the food oil and chemical corporations make poor quality food on the cheap, the oil, pharmaceutical, medical and insurance companies rake in the dollars the corporate farms spend on fertilizer and pesticides, and when our food makes us sick, the pharmaceutical, medical and insurance companies make even more money.  The sicker we get, the more money they make.  Check out “The 2008 Farm Bill” on the Union of Concerned Scientists website:  www.ucsusa.org.

 

Holistic Galaxy…why?

Holistic because of the way I see the world – all the parts that make up the whole of life and how well they fit into the whole.

Galaxy because I have so many interests about so many things, yet they are somehow connected – the way all the parts of a galaxy hold together.

Blog because all of these interests are not appropriate for my website, and even if they were, there wouldn’t be enough room. And, perhaps I’ll get to hear from like minded people.