Love in other, stranger places

We're losing many things because we've lost the wisdom of how to love them. Our species gets wrapped up in itself, narrowing its perspective around times like Valentine's Day. We retreat into our "one couple = love," "my family = love" and beyond that, we withdraw our connection to the rest of what there is to love in the world. As if it mattered less, especially on this one day.

An addiction to corporate control decides where we put much of our love. We love convenience, cars and clutter, and so we buy, spray and land-fill corporate waste all over the planet. We aid in pumping polluting profits into the atmosphere, deluding ourselves that we deserve, earned that right, somehow. And waste hard-earned money on plastic bags, bottles and bargains that float their way into our oceans, as if loving how we live matters more than whether every place is livable.

Our lack of love is losing….

Monarch butterflies

Without them, how can we can teach children not to catch or injure them? Or teach them to let the monarchs fly free and, yes, chase them around gardens. Children need monarchs more than monarchs need them. Talk to a kid about not pulling the wings off a butterfly. And plant native milkweed everywhere. That would be love.

Water

Fresh, clean snow-melt or rainfall heading for the oceans. Some of us older people can remember what that tasted like. The plastic flavor in bottled water, even from a French spring, is not the same. You must go into the wilderness for the old purity. Places that we're also not loving enough. For your sake, filter your home's piped-in water. And for the kids' sake, fight every polluting of the aquifers. That would be love.

Air

That smells clean. Some rural people still breathe air that purifies our bloodstream and lungs, though even out there our lack of love sullies that purity. Air was not meant to give us asthma, coughs and more regulations. It was meant to circulate so we could love breathing it. Pull over on your next car trip and really smell the stuff. And think about what you could so your grandkids and theirs will have the chance to do more than read about it in ancient history books. That would be love.

Bees

It's called colony collapse disorder, but it's our collapsed love that's threatened, too. We can more imagine loving a music idol than a single bee or a hive of them. And more important than all the pollination that might no longer continue, will be all the buzzing of billions of insects that might disappear. Worse than how we'll starve without them will be how much lonelier we will feel in the universe without their presence. Put bee barns and hives in your garden. And put Roundup on your never-buy/use-again list. That would be love.

Trees

We've forgotten the ancients' love of grand trees. For the sake of softer paper wiping our tushes, stacked-up apartment buildings, and destructive development that we believe in when we cash out our homes, or so we can add to the politicians' discretionary money, we are losing our love of trees. Old growth pine, ancient redwoods, and rain forest giants falling under corporate saws. We let them because we believe that love of a tree is relevant only to children's fairy tales. Plant new trees. And also save an old one from a developer. That would be loving.

Group conversation

We love talking about ourselves, the latest movie we saw, CD we bought and trendy place we shredded our wallets at. Intimate, close-knit and family-oriented has replaced a love of groups, because we don't love the idiots at work, the road-ragers, corrupt politicians and mass shooters. Once upon a time we sat around campfires outside our cave homes and teepees and talked. Whatever we talked about apparently was meaningful enough for us to survive. Find a place and time to talk to more than one or two people, at length. And talk deeply, long enough to learn what they need help with. It might feel strange to revive a love of Man. And Woman.

Democratic decisions

Some of us love a leader because he's not white. Even if he's abusedly deported more dark people than any Anglo leader before him. And supported military intervention as much as any gun-lover ever. What little he's done that's within the realm of love, will be remembered. Forgetting that we should love democracy more than blindly follow leaders shouldn't be what we're remembered for. There are better legacies of our love. Like relearning how a meeting could operate democratically. Teaching ourselves that consensus makes us more loveable than idolatry. That would be a love refound.

Hands-on, manual labor, arts and crafts

We love our IPad, Pods and phones. So much, that rudely talking to them in front of others is accepted behavior. And we've become too civilized to stoop to manual labor, get ourselves dirty or create something with our hands, because we reached the technological superiority of 3-D printers. We lost our love of putting our love into a chunk of salvaged wood, drawing, painting and pasting. Stuff that we loved doing as children. Instead of electronics, gift a child a pen and pad. Better yet, pick some up in your hands, use them, until you start wondering why you ever gave them up. You could find more to love in yourself.

Whistling and singing

Our ability to make sounds like birds and put our words to music were acquired gifts few species could manipulate. Now, so many of us don't know how to whistle or ever sing aloud, alone, much less with a group. It's almost unimaginable, outside of being in an audience that we likely paid to be part of. Especially in this country, how much quieter it must seem to the other species that they only hear our songs coming from churches and elementary schools. Teach a kid to whistle to the dog, to get someone's attention, or to accompany their favorite song.

Better yet, have a drink, sit out on the patio and sing along with your favorite song or band. Your voice won't make the air any cleaner. The neighbors will think you're just drunk. But you might make the monarchs and bees wonder whether you're bringing us back from the brink. But a lot more bits of all these other kinds of love could clean up a planet. We'd all love for our kids to remember that.

That's my Valentine for you, hoy,

RudyG, a.k.a. Chicano fabulist mextasy author Rudy Ch. Garcia, looking for love in the stranger places

Keystone XL pipeline–big nail in Aztlán's coffin

A flashback from Chicano Movement history hit me today, because of what now sits on President Obama's desk that will severely damage more than just the Southwest. It began with recent news.

"In China, the drought dried up a 1300 square mile lake four times the size of NYC.

"In the American Sierra mountains, bears are not hibernating because it is too warm.

"In Australia, blistering heat chased koalas out of trees, sickening many, and baked 100,000 bats to death.

In Clovis, N.M., tumbleweeds are eating the town. "Up to four feet of tumbleweeds cover the ground. Some residents can't leave their house. Thousands of tumbleweeds from a freak weather pattern that's becoming the new normal." [The full article.]

If you're a Chicano in Clovis, you might be a little worried what the Keystone XL Pipeline will do to speed up Global Heating. Or not. Or you might have noticed the flood of Oil and Gas Industry commercials that make it sound like there's nada to worry about.

China? That's on the other side of the planet, you might think. Bears, koalas and bats? My kids can see them on the Internet or in the zoo, you might say. But, you might think other thoughts.

Polar bears threatened by Arctic drilling and polar icecaps that are melting from Global Heating are both colored white. But--silly analogy--that doesn't make them just a white Anglo problem. Anymore than smog is just a Chicano problem because it's brown.

Latinos and blacks flexed their political muscles and helped elect the first non-Anglo President, Barack Obama. So, we matter, when we decide to move into action.

The same as in 1967 Martin Luther King's 1967 speech when he spoke out against the War in Vietnam and the 1970 Chicano Moratorium against the War. Chicanos and blacks added their voices and bodies to oppose the War. That contributed to the U.S. 1970 talks with the North Vietnamese, and the U.S. Vietnamization policy that began pulling U.S. troops out of Viet Nam. All of Washington, D.C. gets nervous when browns and blacks start showing up in the middle of a lot of whites.

Every day, I receive Internet news and Email from throughout Aztlán and the U.S., from latino community, cultural and student groups struggling with issues like poverty, miseducation, Chicano studies, healthcare, and the list goes on and on. Obviously, these are important and I'm not suggesting they be thrown away to work on stopping Global Warming.

But Global Warming affects the health of inner-city children, abuelos, todos, not just those in Clovis, N.M. Toxic spills from fracking and pipelines won't go around Latino neighborhoods. Pollution is not prejudiced.

All this led me to imagine the following dynamic:

That when latino neighborhood organizations begin passing more resolutions against fracking-drilling near their communities;

When Chicano, dominicano, puertoriqueño high school and college groups take time from their actions defending minority studies, in order to add their bodies to "Stop the XL Pipeline" pickets;

When latino artists, authors, musicians and groups add their arts' perspective to widen the anti-fracking works that primarily appeal to Anglos;

When latino leaders--political, community, social--add their votes and resolutions to the resistance movement against the oil and gas industry;

When many, many more latinos decide that the air they breath, water they drink and dirt their children play in should be as natural and untainted as that of the Anglos,

THEN the struggle against Global Warming will take on a multinational character that polluters and political supporters of pollution will worry and do something about. Especially, at this moment, Obama.

Yesterday the U.S. State Department released its Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) on Keystone XL, the countdown to a final decision by President Obama on approving the pipeline. [Info on its environment impact.]

"The report does not take a stand on the pipeline’s climate impact -- leaving the ball entirely in President Obama’s court. The fossil fuel industry wants you to believe that today’s report means this fight is over. And that’s one difference between us and them."

Organizations made up mostly of Anglo activists, such as 350.org, and others are coordinating mobilization [a la Chicano Moratorium] for this year to help Obama make up his mind in a way that will keep our agua cleaner, our air more breathable and our lands more livable. They need the latino voice, leadership and numbers. And the blacks. Don't worry about the indios who are tied stronger to Nature; they have been in or led the struggle from the beginning, from Canada to Mexico.

If this post sounds like a 60s or 70s grito, blame my Chicano Movement upbringing. If it sounds like an old vato trying to relive the past, blame young activist Chicanos I've met who are involved or leading the anti-XL Pipeline struggle. If this sounds like something you don't think latinos must join, you only have to wait a little for it to come to your doorstep.

If you don't want to wait, here's what's happening, beginning Monday.

If you're in college or part of a church, here's how students and members are cutting their institutions from supporting pollution.

The largely Anglo movement against Keystone XL and Global Warming doesn't know well how to appeal to latinos. They don't always translate flyers to attract the mexicanos. Etc. Etc. They obviously can't do it without our expertise.

Perdón por mis recuerdos políticos, pero es todo, hoy,

RudyG

(My new unpublished YA novel includes a Global Warming mini-theme.)

1st Novel - http://www.discarded-dreams.com/

Author FB - rudy.ch.garcia

Twitter - DiscardedDreams