PEACE AND LOVE

 

PEACE AND LOVE

By Bill Barksdale

 

Peace and Love was the slogan of my teenage youth.

The late 1960’s was a very troubled time in the United States.  I was a teenager and the Hippie movement was born.  Mendocino County became an important part of that movement.  In addition the Viet Nam War was happening, a misadventure of foolish national leadership.  Young people were being drafted and ground up in the war machine, and we were rebelling at the injustice of old men, some women, and a codre of industrialists who had either forgotten or were simply ignoring the horrors of war just a few decades after World War Two! 

The musical Hair was shaking up Joseph Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theater, and soon moved to Broadway.  It’s songs – “Aquarius”, “I Got Life” and “Good Morning Starshine” – came to defining the spirit of the movement along with P. F. Sloan’s song “Eve of Destruction”. 

Harvard University professor, Richard Alpert, took LSD went to India and became Ram Dass.  He wrote the iconic book, Be Here Now and remained an important spiritual guide up through his death last year in 2019.  S.F. rock group It’s A Beautiful Day produced two albums that also helped define the times.  Their song “The Dolphins” is the one I always think of.  “This old world’s just got to change.  It just can’t stay the way it’s been.”  One of the groups’ vocalists and guitar players, Hal Wagenet, lives right here in Willits. 

The 60’s was a time when many people recognized that the U.S. (and much of the world as a result) was going in the wrong direction, one that would likely lead to greater suffering and destruction.  Bad leadership, kind of like now. There were survival systems revived during that time.  In San Francisco there were “communes”, each one devoted to a different aspect of need.  I remember going once a week to the bulk food commune to pick up grains and other dry-goods.  There was also the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic on Haight St, open to all who couldn’t afford to go to a regular doctor for good medical help.  Finding ways to support each other at low financial cost became important.

It was around this time that Mendocino and Humboldt Counties were becoming the destinations for people who wanted to get out of urban areas and experiment with ways to rethink their lives.  Mostly baby-boomer dropouts, often not welcome by the “old-timers” in these rural counties, these seekers and rebels tried different ways to live.  

The Whole Earth Catalogue became the shopping guide for this generation.  Buckminster Fuller’s research and designs for dome construction became an area of interest since these affordable structures were stable and could be more energy efficient.  Organically grown food became a staple.  Drugs - some perceived as beneficial, others very destructive – became part of the culture for many. 

As it happened, many local businessmen made a lot of money subdividing their logged-over land and fallow ranches, selling them off to urban refuges.  Every town in our area is surrounded by these subdivisions.  The “underground economy” of marijuana became one of our area’s largest sources of revenue despite the fact that it was illegal.  That’s something we’re still trying to come to terms with.

Today the deadly Corona-19 virus is changing the world.   Our nation has become Number One in virus transmission and deaths because of lack of federal leadership.  Additionally, our economy is collapsing - again.  Just 13 years ago in 2007 we suffered a major financial and social melt-down because of federal “deregulation” of financial markets and institutions.  Millions of people lost their homes and savings then, and it’s happening again. 

A couple of years ago substantial tax cuts were implemented perpetually for the super-wealthy, but the rest of us received only short-term benefits that will soon come to an end.  Now, the President is floating the idea of “Payroll Tax Cuts”.  Payroll Taxes primarily fund Social Security and Medicare.  In addition they help fund Unemployment Insurance.  When Payroll Taxes are cut, the very social safety net that most Americans depend on is in jeopardy.  If you’re super-wealthy you’ll be fine.  It’s everyone else that will feel the hurt.

As I go on my morning walk with a mask hanging around my neck, my morning meditation is still “Peace and Love”.  Fortunately, things can and often do improve. If that is your goal, do as Esther Hicks recommended and “Reach for the thought that feels better.” It’s a comforting thing you can learn to do.

She Needed Help Not Prison

 

She Needed Help Not Prison

By Bill Barksdale, Columnist

The other day I was listening to an interview with the gifted young attorney, Brittany K. Barnett, on Public Radio’s program Fresh Air.  Ms. Barnett’s book A Knock At Midnight has been named the Best Book of 2020 by Amazon.com.  She’s been responsible for getting Presidents Obama and even Trump to commute the sentences of several people who committed non-violent crimes and were sentenced to unusually harsh punishments.  One such person was Ms. Barnett’s own mother, a registered nurse who became addicted to crack cocaine.  Once released from her incarceration, she was clean and sober and returned to nursing specializing in helping others with drug abuse issues. 

One thing that particularly caught my attention in Ms. Barnett’s interview was her comment about her Mother.  “She needed help, not prison.”  Former Mendocino County sheriff, Tom Allman, has said this many times regarding inmates in County jail.  That was the reason tax payers voted to tax ourselves with the Measure B initiative – to help fund solutions and urgently needed help for people with mental illness, of which substance abuse is one.  Incarceration costs tax-payers much more than effective therapy and rehabilitation.

About five years ago Tom Allman spearheaded an intensive campaign to pass Measure B.  Measure B’s intended purpose was to create a much needed support system for our County’s mental health system and its overworked, underpaid personnel.  Tommy warned time-and-again about how various County and local policing agencies had become the defacto caretakers for many people who are mentally ill and need help, not a prison cell. 

Unfortunately, the Measure B Advisory Committee, although peopled by some very well intentioned people – has failed it’s mission along with our County Board of Supervisors in respect to mental health care.  The Committee meets only two hours per month and has an unwieldly eleven members.  Millions have been spent on studies and acquisition of inadequate real estate to plan a facility that will treat less than ten people at a time while our County’s mental health needs increase exponentially. 

Currently the United States had the highest number of incarcerated individuals of any county in the world, with more than 2.12 million people in prison.  Number two on the list is China with well over a billion more people than the U.S.  The “prison for profit” system currently in place in the U.S. is in itself a crime – often literally with government sanctioned criminal behavior on the part of companies’ treatment of prisoners, many of those prisoners suffering from various mental illnesses.

County and city governments would do well to create general plans and tax incentives that encourage development of affordable housing, vocational training in schools for a changing work force, and effectively address our social and mental health issues.  Good planning creates targeted goals that focuses spending of scarce human resources and public funds. 

Many people are becoming homeless now, oftentimes because of our Covid-19 recession.  Old age, lost jobs, illness, children in need – these are not crimes.  Tax legislation that transfers trillions of working-class dollars to the super wealthy, political edicts that undermine Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid – these are genuine crimes.

Can you imagine what today’s medical personnel as well as service professionals are going through?  Burn out, Covid infection, separation from family.  Arrogant, angry people continue to go out in public without even wearing a mask.  They still have big gatherings, crowd airports and some religious facilities - spreading Covid19 and causing, currently, as many deaths each day in the U.S. as died at the World Trade Center – every day!

When my very loving Dad was very young, just age seventeen, he lied about his age and joined the Army.  After a few weeks of basic training he was shipped off to fight the war, World War II, in the Pacific.  He loved his country.  He never spoke about what happened to him in the war, but he suffered from depression and alcoholism for the rest of his life.  When I spoke with his nurse at the V.A. hospital during my Dad’s last days before he died the nurse said “Guys your Dad’s age are all dying of the same things.  Addiction to alcohol and tobacco.”  He forgot to mention chronic depression.

Should those guys have been locked up in prisons?  Many were.  Today many military veterans, both women and men, have returned from our country’s “endless war” profit machine to become homeless, suffering from traumatic brain injuries, depression, addiction, poverty and epidemic suicide.  They are often shamed for “not being man enough”.  

Many others growing up in poverty suffer from homelessness, hunger, poor education, stress, low self-esteem, the evils of prejudice, substance abuse, and chronic unemployment.  Some of you reading this may be suffering from depression, addiction, some form of dementia, schizophrenia or a mood disorder - or may know someone who is.  Prison, or treatment and rehabilitation?

Those words haunt me, “She needed help, not prison.”

Bill Barksdale was a 2016 inductee into the Realtor® Hall of Fame.  He is a referral agent for Coldwell Banker Mendo Realty Inc.  707-489-2232.  CADRE# 01106662.  Read more of his articles at his blog at BBarksdale.com

 

Comfort Food for the Soul

 

Comfort Food for the Soul

By Bill Barksdale, columnist

There’s a small cabin we like to rent every once in a while on the Oregon coast.  It has a cozy fireplace and ancient pine paneling and a big window overlooking the ocean.  As I sit here next to my own fireplace radiating a comforting heat on a chilly morning, I think not only of that cabin but of a movie that I’m going to watch again tonight called Enchanted April by film maker Mike Newell.  It’s a story about people who are having difficulty in their lives, looking for a way to feel better.  They don’t know each other well but see an ad in the paper for a villa for rent in Italy.  The only way they can afford to rent it is by going in together and splitting the cost. 

Obviously this movie is not a fast-paced thriller or even a laugh-fest.  It’s a slowly unfolding tale that weaves together the stories of people who don’t know each other well, if at all, but have a common need to simply feel better.  Isn’t it interesting that we often don’t take the time to just feel better?  If there was ever a time to enjoy that basic pleasure of looking for something that makes one feel good, this is that time.  Fortunately, there are things to feel grateful about all around us.  Sometimes we have to look a bit more to see them, but they’re there.  I have a list and every day I add one thing that I’m grateful for.  It’s a long list now, but I never have difficulty thinking of something to add.

It’s not that I deny that life is often a struggle.  Of course it is.  My late friend Gregg had a childhood disease that left him a paraplegic, unable to walk.  Yet he got out every day in his motorized wheel chair and courageously maneuvered the driveway dips, broken or missing sidewalks, even nasty slurs yelled from some idiot in a speeding car – and would then drop into my office and we’d chat about the theater or an idea that had been cooking in his imagination.  He had a brilliant mind.  Pain?  Yes.  Struggle?  Yes.  But still valued being alive.  A remarkable person.

Some things like pain or loss of abilities are more of a challenge.  The process of dying is often a great difficulty for the person dying and their loved ones.  We all die.  It’s nature’s way.  Eventually there’s a peace that can be found in death.  Losing a loved one can feel like a huge punch in the stomach.  Grief cannot be denied.  Gratitude for the good times can help sooth. 

For thirty years I served people in my business.  Each day was full and busy.  Much of my job was helping people though big life-changes.   If you would have told me I would actually enjoy studying business law, easements or water statutes – I would have thought you were crazy, yet I have found those things fascinating.  Much of my satisfaction came from helping people.  Often times enjoyment of life comes from being useful and of benefit to others.  All that learning came in handy to help a client solve a problem.  That was my job, being of service to my clients.  Gave me a sense of satisfaction and even joy.

I just glanced down and noticed the pair of bright red wool socks that my dear friend, Emmy, dropped off at my front door yesterday.  She knitted them and each time I see their whimsically creative pattern I feel her friendship and remember how just a few days ago we were laughing wildly as she told me she had torn out the toe of the sock twice to correct a missed stitch.  The sheer fun she gets out of knitting and our telephone horseplay is enough to brighten the moments. 

Sometimes, especially lately, I’ve listened to the news too much.  I’ve learned to just turn it off.  There are things I can do something about, but there are some things that are out of my control so I’m teaching myself to let go of that stuff.  There are a million different places I can focus my thoughts.  Some are truly important and I want to work those situations out.  Some are just as well forgotten.  I remember an old self-hypnosis tape I used to have.  The therapist would often say, once the listener was is a deep state of relaxation “Now let go.  Let go.”  And you know what, when I allow myself to be very relaxed – and I realize it’s my choice – it’s pretty easy to let go of bothersome thoughts.  They’re just thoughts after all and I can always choose to focus on something else. 

Worrying can become a habit.  In fact it usually is a habit.  Worry seldom, if ever, fixes anything.  Oh, I can think of something I want to do, but it doesn’t have to become an obsessive “worry”.  Just figure out a time to get it done and do it, or let it go.  One thing I choose not to worry about anymore is what someone may think of me.   That’s their stuff, not mine.  Often times a kind word or note to that person can be enough for both of us to feel better and “let go”.  It doesn’t hurt me to say a kind word, or even “I’m sorry” if I was unkind.  I don’t have an ego need to always be right.

Think of something that makes you feel happy.  Relax into that.  It just takes a moment.