Lives vs. profits. A false choice.

Two miners died in Ouray, Colorado this week.  Somebody's Dad.  Somebody's Granddad. Somebody's husband.  Somebody's friend.   

They were mining silver, gold, and lead.  

The number one use of silver in industry is electronics. 

There is a human cost to planned obsolescence and always having to have the newest, best, fastest, coolest gadget.  Food for thought before the next upgrade to your phone / computer / camera?  

"The Silver Star Resources/Star Mine Operations, the company operating the Revenue-Virginius Mine, has had an above-average history of occupational violations." 

There is a human cost to cutting corners in mining.  

I have been in conversation with several people lately who have lamented government regulation of any and all industry because of the financial cost.  

They say that regulations are job killers.

It seems to me that lack of regulations and / or lack of regulations with teeth and / or lack of enforcement of said regulations are people killers.  Dad killers.  Husband killers.  Granddad killers.  Friend killers.  

I know that Dads and Husbands and Friends need jobs.  But asking us to choose between jobs and regulations is a false choice.  Asking us to choose between human life and profits is a false choice.  We can have both healthy, vibrant communities and healthy, vibrant, profitable workplaces.  

We can choose, as a society, to create and enforce, regulations that insist on best-safety practices in mines and all industries.  If we do, we might save someone's Granddad's life.  

Discuss?  

Something "impossible" before breakfast.

How does your intuition speak to you?

Mine seems to be speaking to me through my body lately and if I ignore the quiet messages, it gets louder.  Yesterday it got loud in the form of my neck seizing up.  Over the course of several hours, as I crunched the financial numbers and told myself "no.  can't afford it right now." about several things that I wanted to do, the range of motion in my neck, my ability to turn my head side to side, shrunk until I could only look straight ahead without pain.  

I recently saw a quote that said, "You don't get what you deserve, you get what you believe."

I don't know if that's ultimately true.  I don't even know if I believe it.  But I pondered it.  

This morning, when I woke up, I thought about this physical pattern in my life - how my neck seizes up periodically.  I thought back to yesterday and the day before and any physical activities that might have contributed to this particular painful freeze.  And when I didn't find any obvious causes there, I started looking at the mental/emotional patterns that might be associated with this pain in the neck. 

Since inability to turn my head was really limiting my ability to see to either side or look over my shoulder I asked myself, "How are you limiting your own vision?" "How are you limiting yourself?"

And the answer seemed obvious, I was telling myself no.  And then I realized that the way to say no without words is to turn your head back and forth to the left and right.  Exactly the motion that I could no longer do.  OK, intuition, you've got my attention.  

So I started to wonder, if I did this to myself, can I undo it?  Can I heal it myself?  

I started by remembering how countless chiropractors through the years have adjusted this very same issue in my neck.  And the various stretching exercises they've assigned after giving the adjustment.  

I asked the two sides of my brain to work together to help me find the solution.  I called on my experiences in yoga as a student and teacher and I listened to my body.

I experimented with small motions.  Turning my head side to side made a lovely crunchy noise in my neck.  Nodding my head, like saying yes, as I turned my head side to side slowly, alleviated the crunchy noise and allowed me to move into the tender places and stretch them.  

I spent half an hour nodding yes, very slowly.  I started out with very, very small movements and moved into deeper nods.  

And now?  There are still tender places, like muscles overused, but I have the full range of motion in my neck again.  

It seems like my intuition is trying to tell me not to be so stingy with myself or in other words, be a little more generous with myself.  

It's hard to allow myself a $15 concert ticket or a $14 drop-in yoga class or a $12 book when I'm no longer getting a regular paycheck.  

The deeper question for me seems to be, "Do I believe I "deserve" to have those things, since I'm no longer working a regular job?"  If a friend asked me the same question about herself/himself, I would answer, of course you do.

I'll be nodding and saying a quiet, "yes" to myself, over and over and over again today, emotionally, mentally, spiritually.  

It's not really the items that matter.  I don't actually need to go buy the concert ticket, the book, the yoga class, I just need to stop treating myself like a naughty child for reaching for them.  

I thought for sure I was going to have to cancel my plans for the day and go to the chiropractor and I was thinking, I can't afford to go to the chiropractor right now.  I didn't wake up thinking it was possible to heal my own neck problems, but it seems I've done one impossible thing before breakfast.  That's a good start.

Do you ever act as your own oppressor?  Do you limit your own vision of what's possible?  

How can you change and release those patterns? 

Now, instead of checking for typos, I'm simply going to post this and run out the door to help plant beautiful, delicious gardens that will feed anyone who is hungry.

https://www.facebook.com/PlantARowToEndHunger

How cool is that?  

whisper wild light

Flirt with Disaster.  Check.  

whisper, Wild Light
the Stars sing Peace tonight
Fish and I flew differently,
believing in magic
Mirror cried, "glow Child!
Dream Gardens spring from Love Rain"

~Dawn, 2001

---- la la la la la - la la - la la la ---- If I knew how to write music, these la's would come with a melody, but alas, I do not yet know how to notate music in pixels, so I simply leave you with this......


what, in this moment, do you most want?

i want to sleep in everyday and dream and dream and dream

i want to get up early every morning and meditate and do yoga and run and do my spanish lessons

i want to listen to fabulous music and melt into it and let it saturate my night dreams as well as my day dreams

I want to know where my son is and if he is well and happy

i want him to have amazing adventures and follow his dreams and his heart and I want some amazing girl to love him so much and make him feel amazing and I want him to honor her love and them to live happily ever after and

I want to be a teenage girl again knowing all that I know now and

i never want to be a teen again and

I want to have the body of a teen and the knowing of who I am now

i want to live be 157 and dance everyday between now and then and

to laugh and sing in 20 different languages or more and

I want to play the accordion while riding my unicycle and wearing a top hat that really fits me and

i want to be able to walk in high heels and

I want to write something enigmatic and clearly true and fatasmagorical

I want to see that movie Avatar and

i want to live in a place so beautiful it makes my heart hurt and to defend it with my life and win and

I want adam to know how much I love him how some mornings when he's still sleeping and I'm awake my heart aches because he is so perfect and beautiful as if he were my newborn child even and

I want my niece to be forever as vivacious as her 6 year old self is-- how selfless and overflowing with love she is

I want to be that loving

I want the world to let her be that joyful and not hurt her ever

I want to make my house the most warm, welcoming, joyful, loving, comfortable, beautiful, intriguing, fantastic, organic, place to live and grow and be

I want to take a nap

I want to drink coffee

I want to climb a mountain and dance on top

I want to feel the cold, cold air on my face and laugh and dance and sing like I did on the way to work the other day when I got up early and caught the earlier bus and walked 20 minutes from a further away bus stop and the stars were just giving the last sight of them before the sun came up behind the mountains and the trees were stark against the barely lightening sky and it was so cold and I was so happy and

I want my son to feel that kind of unmitigated joy at just being alive and

I want to grow and eat blueberries and avocados and

I want the world to find out that we don't need guns to protect what's really important, that sense of aliveness

i want to drink fresh water and eat unimaginable deserts in strange new lands (yes thank you rob brezsny for making that part of my background thinking)

I want to drive a car fast to the the end of the world and jump off and grab a falling star and fly across the universe in luxurious comfort and amazement and not have to write any of it down because I can transmit that feeling to someone just by looking at them

I want to be able to touch each book in the library and immediately "grock" it without having even to open it.

I want someone to paint white wings on my tan back and for my long hair to fall across the wings, partially obstructing the view of them and

I want to be a secret angel superhero who scatters largess and delivers little miracles and

I want to feel the sun on my face when I have a nap in the sunbeam on the couch like the cat and

I want to be able to simply look at the most jaded and guarded and angry persons I meet and have them know how perfectly safe they are and for them to begin to know the simple joy of breathing and the deep joy of sharing something anything with someone anyone


originally posted by dawn on a blog on gaia/zaadz, dec 17, 2009