Closed for the Season

I've just hung up my sign, "Closed for the Season."
What's closing?

My desire to blog.

What's the Season?

The undefined period of time I will not be posting.

Thank you, dear readers, for your attentive and loving support of my writing and my work. I encourage you to consider creating your own blog...a most incredible experience, which, also incredibly, is free. Thank you, Google, for the gift of blogspot.

Let me know if you do open a blog...I just might pop in and leave a comment.

Much love to all on this May Day. May peace prevail on Earth, and let it begin in our lives today. Bethany

The World Welcomes President Obama's Leadership

Thanks to my friend, Bubloo Sen, I am speaking to women's groups this weekend in Bangalore, on the American electoral process and how we came to elect Barack Obama as our 44th president.

Given the worldwide reach of CNN and other cable news networks, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Indian citizens are so tuned into the nuances of the Obama campaign. Everyone seems familiar with the Chicago sea of faces celebrating victory on election night and the gathering of three million Americans for the January inaugural.

But listening to Indian women talk about the US election of the first president of color, I became aware of an important distinction: their interest in President Obama's win is not simply because of media coverage, or because of Obama's color. They, like those of us who voted for this remarkable man, are drawn by HIS MESSAGE.

For years, America has been the promised land for those seeking material comforts. Obama's campaign message was not about comfort or consumption, and we all were relieved. All world citizens are hungering for a message about community, service, sharing and protecting resources. Americans are tired of the American Dream that is little more than the Pursuit of Stuff.

After my Friday night program, a new friend named Bulbul said I had "Confirmed what I believed" about the leap America made in selecting a new President. Like me, she is hopeful and excited that the US has moved to another level of living....where resources are more equitably distributed, where we take decisions and actions based on similiarities not differences and our attention is focused on "We" not "Me."

Yes We Can.

Happy Nursing Mother's Day

A couple of weeks ago, I saw an article on the internet that provided me with the only reason I can think of to wear an under wire bra:

DETROIT (Reuters) - A 57-year-old Detroit woman avoided serious injury when the under wire on her bra deflected a bullet shot at her from next door, police said.

The woman, who lives on the West side of Detroit, saw a group of men breaking into a neighbor's house on Tuesday morning. When the men spotted her, one of them fired a shot at her, a police spokesman said.

The bullet struck the under wire on the woman's bra and that saved her from a more serious injury, police said.

"It did slow the bullet down," said Detroit police spokesman Phillip Cook. "She sustained injuries but they're not life threatening."

The woman, who was not identified, was treated at a nearby hospital. The suspects in the shooting drove away.

While breast cancer is a major killer of women worldwide (400,000 annually) we still don’t know what causes it.   Close to 40,000 women die in the U.S. every year from it.

I wonder about tight bras, especially ones with wires, causing lymph to pool and sit, full of waste and toxins, in the fatty breast tissue.  The lymphatic system is the body’s sewer system.  It is meant to flow, to pull all that is no longer of value from our cells, tissues, organs, and blood and dispose of it!

What if, in the name of glamour, women are unknowingly creating a dirty, scummy poisonous pond on the chest?

Beyond my suspicions around the under wire’s link to cancer, I am sorry any woman consciously chooses to wear something so uncomfortable.  In my thirties, when I thought I was my breasts, I owned a few of these torture devices.  Ask any woman who wears one, she’ll tell you one of the main reasons she hurries home each night is to free herself from its strangling clutches.

All last week, though I doubt it was an intentional build up to Mother’s Day, the media obsessed on Miss California’s breasts: first, that they were man made and paid for by donations, and secondly, that she sorta, kinda bared them for a camera.  Is it really against pageant law to showoff your silicone?

Am I the only person who remembers the life giving purpose of breasts?  Not for pushing up or out, photographing or filming.  Mammary glands are for feeding babies.  Ask any of those wonderful lactation consultants who help young mothers.

On this Mother’s Day, I thank my own mother for nursing me, giving me such a great, healthy start on this Earth.  I thank my now grown son, for the privilege of feeding him the same way, launching him into the world with strong immunity and an excellent ability to heal.      May more babies spend time on their mothers’ breasts.   And may the media and under wire bra manufacturers let breasts be!

Click here for more about the momma and baby camels pictured.

Sharing Our Vermont Home in India

Indian hospitality is so over the top, unless you experience the graciousness, you can't possibly imagine it. Returning from my three plus weeks in Hyderabad to Bangalore, my suitcase is full of gifts, many from people who do not have $13 a month to buy groceries. I'm not kidding.

Knowing full well I would meet such loving people and not be able to reciprocate by inviting them to my Vermont home, I made a plan. I would bring a bit of Vermont with me.

What did I bring? Little handmade sachets, full of dry balsam needles. I cut the tree down in our woods last fall, and dried the needles in paper bags. In January, my mother, Kay Greeley, and I sewed little bags and filled them with the fragrant needles...topped off with a few decorative bags.

In the past three months, I have given more than 12 dozen bags away across India, to folks I meet on trains, at church, in yoga classes, through friends, at workshops and especially in Hyderabad, at the meetings with the hardworking mothers.

As I hand out the sachets, I always say, "Take a deep breath and sigh. Relax. Now you know what it is like to be in our Green Moutain woods, this beautiful smell of Christmas trees. If you ever do have a chance to visit our home, you will recognize this relaxing fragrance from today!"