remembering the Pedoscope

A to Z challenge, theme: anatomy, day 6: F
Flash nonfiction, 100 words

Years ago, a doctor X-rayed my feet with my shoes on so he could show me what my bones looked like stuffed into high heels. As if I couldn’t figure that out without radiation.

Later on, I learned that shoe-fitting fluoroscopy was a thing at one time. This grand idea came into vogue in the 1920s, and lingered as late as the 70s in some places. At the shoe store, customers, mostly children it seems, got X-ray glimpses of their feet inside the shoes they were trying on. Like you couldn’t get a good fit without radiation.

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2021: let’s choose health

The new year approaches. It’s the perfect time for all of us to collectively choose a new year’s resolution. What if we all agreed that 2021 is the year we get healthy?

It’s not complicated. For the most part, it’s as simple as transitioning to a whole food, plant-based diet along with getting our bodies into some motion. Throw in some fresh air and sunshine, and it’s a wonderful package that improves our individual and collective health while also addressing the number one factor that can help to heal our planetary environmental crisis.

The data is out there (science, you know) that demonstrates a whole food, plant-based diet can prevent, mitigate, or reverse the big name killer diseases we’ve been living with for far too long — you know, these are all those co-morbidities that have sadly compromised so many with the coronavirus. Heart disease, lung disease, diabetes, cancers, kidney disease, high blood pressure — all of these things and more can be prevented, mitigated, or reversed by simply making the switch from meat-dairy-processed to plants.

The data is out there (yup, that pesky science again), that shows animal agriculture’s negative impact on our personal health as well as the health of our planet. It is the number one factor contributing to our climate crisis as it bulldozes rainforests, pollutes our air, soils, and oceans, and drives species to extinction at an alarming rate. We are all part of this problem and have the power to fix it with a simple lifestyle change that only benefits us.

We spent 2020 collectively fear-focused on fighting Covid-19. We spent the entire year engaging in stop-gap measures, many of which were destructive for people in terms of economics, social fabric, mental health, education, and, yes, even physical health. We could have chosen health during that time, but, even now, many choose instead to simply wait, masked and reclusive, breathlessly placing their trust in a vaccine for which long-term safety is an absolute unknown.

Next year could be different. Let’s make 2021 the year we take a positive, no-fear approach to a better, safer world. Let’s make 2021 the year we actually focus on getting and being healthy — together. 

get in and drive

For all those so feverishly jumping aboard the vaccination train, a little caution is prescribed. 

There is a reason the pharmaceutical corporations secured for themselves an absolute assurance of “no liability.” They definitely used an abundance of caution before proceeding to ensure that they would have no responsibility for negative consequences. That in and of itself should give you pause. You, too, need to exercise caution — if not for yourself, than certainly on behalf of your child.

There is a multitude of red flags on the process and the product being rushed through right now. So do your homework. Think critically.

Think as the sovereign human being that you are. Before you decide to put all of your trust in government and corporate decisions concerning your body or your child’s, take responsibility. Take responsibility for yourself, for your health. Make informed, intelligent decisions rather than relying blindly on politicians and CEO’s. 

These are entities from whom we have repeatedly seen corrupted data especially over the last months, as well as conflicting and dubious directives. Nor is the long term track record relative to vaccination unsullied. A cursory investigation will turn up plenty of troubling statistics. Even as we speak, Africa copes with a resurgence of polio entirely due to vaccination. We live in a time and a nation where iatrogenic injury, that is, medical error, is the #3 leading cause of death (according to none other than Johns Hopkins). 

It is not “anti-vaxx” to have reasonable questions or doubts about a fast-tracked, unproven treatment funded by taxpayers and produced by profit-seeking corporations with exactly zero liability for the results. The term “anti-vaxx” is cancel culture at work, a propagandized pejorative with the express purpose of shutting down healthy, critical inquiry.

So take responsibility. Start by taking care of yourself. All too often, we see a carefully masked person waiting in line to buy cigarettes, or alcohol, or all manner of junk food, then religiously applying hand sanitizer enroute to their car. So many rely on the idea that the medical industry has all the answers, but the truth is it starts with you. 

It’s basic. Good nutrition, clean water, exercise, sunlight, sleep, emotional stability. Start there, and run with it. Then do your homework on making serious medical decisions, like vaccination. Thoroughly educate yourself, going beyond the surface presentations of mainstream media. Do it while you still  can, before everything is censored.

Don’t rely on the government and the pharmaceutical corporations to come racing in like the calvary to save you from whatever the germ of the day is, to save you from yourself and the host of injuries corporations and government already impose through our water, foods, environment, and propaganda.

It’s your car. Check the oil, put gas in, air up the tires, all that stuff. Read the owner’s manual. Pay attention to it. Drive it like you own it. Drive it like your life depends on it.

you change the world

be kind to yourself, others, animals, earth – go plant-based

The United Nations Environment Programme yesterday released a report that looks at the role human activity plays in giving rise to zoonotic diseases. These are diseases that can be transmitted from animals to humans, as COVID-19 is supposed to have originated.

The report calls out seven “human-mediated factors … most likely driving the emergence of zoonotic diseases.” They cite seven “disease drivers”:

1) increasing human demand for animal protein; 2) unsustainable agricultural intensification;
3) increased use and exploitation of wildlife; 4) unsustainable utilization of natural resources accelerated by urbanization, land use change and extractive industries; 5) increased travel and transportation; 6) changes in food supply; and 7) climate change.

No big surprises here. It’s the usual culprits for so many of the things ailing us, particularly the impoverished citizens of the globe.

Given all that we know, it’s still startling how little we’re actually doing about any of it. As the report mentions, these negative impact factors are actually increasing or intensifying.

Human demand for animal protein is just one of them. It’s startling to realize that even though it is common knowledge that our insatiable demand for meat and dairy directly contributes to profound health and environmental issues, it remains on the increase.

Data from the Global Meat & Poultry Trends report released by Packaged Facts in February of this year shows that:

“Meat consumption worldwide is expected to increase 1.4% per year through 2023…”

It predicts that “…global meat and poultry consumption will reach 313 million metric tons in 2023. Global per capita consumption will rise slightly to 39 kilograms per year.” That’s roughly 86 pounds per person — globally.

USDA data cited by the The National Chicken Council shows that in the United States, per capita meat consumption (including beef, pork, and poultry) in 1960 was 167.2 pounds. In 2019 that number was 224.3. Although a slight dip to 220.2 pounds is predicted in 2020, meat consumption is forecast to be on the increase again, up to 223.5 pounds in 2021.

That is a lot of dead animals. And repercussions.

While plenty of folks are being religious about wearing masks and social distancing, the UNEP report underscores that there are other truly meaningful things we could be doing to help the world both now and in the future relative to pandemics and beyond. Just look at that list of seven things above. There is no doubt in my mind that there are at least several that each of us, personally, can directly impact. Reducing meat consumption is just one of them. 

Don’t wait for the powers that be to tell you how they’re gonna change the world (and then figure out if you can like it). YOU change the world.

proposed school plans — irresponsible and dangerous

The CDC and state government officials in concert with educators and administrators have developed protocols for back-to-school scenarios. Frankly, what they came up with is deeply troubling. Parents should be rising up.

Schools as they are currently being envisioned will neither be safe places nor healthy ones, all the while shepherding students down a troubling and dangerous path.

Make no mistake about it, this is a curriculum that teaches, normalizes, and prioritizes fear and compliance.

Schools of the near future will involve wearing masks all day, being subjected to screenings, socially distanced, confined to classrooms for meals, confined to classrooms in lieu of assemblies involving other groups, hand sanitizing ad infinitum, etc.

Kids will be psychologically and socially damaged for life even though they are at virtually no risk from the virus. No, apparently, they must suffer for the good of their elders. They might learn their ABCs, but they’ll also get thorough instruction in becoming an automaton.

Where is the outcry? I don’t hear parents rising up to call out the obvious: “This is not a healthy environment for our kids!”

I can only assume the reason for that is because schools in large part have been successful in forming generations of people who abide the norm. It is everyone’s loss, even while the power class chuckles.

It may also be that parents feel relieved to hand education duties back to the professional educators, abdicating the responsibility and accommodating employment.

Just because everyone goes along with something, does not make it okay. You would think that is a lesson of which we would all have some grasp by now, but apparently not. Hence, I suspect that critical thinking skills will remain a low priority for future curricula. 

I also really have to wonder how science will be presented as a school subject. Right now, we hear government officials and media bandy the word “science” about quite a bit without actually presenting solid science. We hear theories, hypotheses, scare mongering, biased projections, manipulated data, and even outright lies presented as scientific faits accomplis.

Real science, thank you very much, observes, explores, tests for a proof. It looks at things from multiple angles. It entertains opposing points of view. Real, good science does not present flawed data, announce results, and take action before all of that has happened, either. Somehow I don’t think that subject is going to be taught.

I am truly sorry for what children are experiencing right now, and sorry for those who will be subjected to the new school agenda. I am sorry for the world that will result from it, if it manages to survive the abuse at all. There is still time to stop it.

We are a country of over 325 million people. There’s a lot of potential there for creative, intelligent thinking and problem solving. But out of all that, we allow the substandard, the mediocre, and even the malevolent to make the rules. Btw, that’s also why we have the two mainstream presidential candidates we’ve got.

We can change all that. We need to think about our children. Parents, wake up, please!

narrative of fear

Some days I wake up scared. I wake up not having a clue what’s going to happen next. Or worse, maybe I do. Everything feels a little out of control like I need to hold onto something. 

Seems like things come out of left field almost every day now and it’s hard to process. Everyone I meet feels the same way. We are just holding onto our various pieces of flotsam while these giant waves carry us along. We look at each other behind our masks from our six-foot stations imprinted on the floor with the question in our eyes where are we going? 

The sun comes up and I listen to the birds singing it’s as if everything is normal but I know it’s not. Maybe for the first time ever I find myself fearing for our fundamental freedom as human beings on this earth and I wonder how to fight for that. I fear the actions of our species far more than what nature may bring. But fear is how it all works isn’t it? And we are going mach 5. 

I have to make myself stop and listen awhile to what’s true and beautiful outside my window in the trees in the sky in the air in my soul and then I am not scared but my heart still rends for what is happening.

It doesn’t make me feel safe to be masked to be distanced to be tracked to be left to die alone in the hands of masked strangers to be tested to be medicated to be genetically altered to be fed gibberish data to suckle a debilitating narrative merely masquerading as science to be cut off from community culture the very rhythm of life no this, this is not the way.

I finally let go of that piece of flotsam only to discover I am the leviathan. The fear dissipates in a poof of anger that just as quickly transforms into power. I claim that.

glyphosate and critical thinking

Yes, I know, glyphosate is an herbicide, but you get the idea.

So maybe some people noticed the more-than-ten-billion-dollars Bayer just agreed to pay out in order to settle thousands of outstanding lawsuits. This involved litigation relative to its subsidiary Monsanto’s product, RoundUp, which contains glyphosate, among other things. The lawsuits had been brought by RoundUp users who became cancer patients suffering from non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Why oh why are people still spraying this stuff on their lawns? Just yesterday, I watched people in a neighborhood, calmly walking around their yards doing just that. Yards where kids play. I imagine some of these conscientious folks wear a mask in the store where they buy their RoundUp. Hmm.

Elsewhere, start noticing those little pesticide/herbicide signs. They are everywhere on the lawns of neighborhood homes and businesses. You know, there’s a reason they have to put an actual warning on a lawn.

I don’t get why people are willing to compromise themselves and others and the natural world for the sake of … weeds. Weeds are a mental construct. That’s about it.

Lawns, honestly, should be a thing of the past anyway. I understand people are concerned about property values, but there’s also the value of life itself. It’s a simple matter of changing perspective about what actually constitutes “beautiful.”

I also don’t get why any glyphosate products are even allowed to be sold in the United States. 

Think about it: Bayer would rather shell out $10 billion dollars than try to defend RoundUp in these cases. That’s how unwinnable it is: $10 billion dollars unwinnable. 

But wait, I do know why RoundUp can still be sold in the United States. It’s because people are still buying it. Which is also why Bayer has $10 billion dollars to spend on this and remain in business.

What, folks, are we thinking? Alas, I fear, there is no thinking involved. At least, not critical thinking.

mosquitoes and beyond: NO to GMO

So now we learn a company called Oxitec is getting ready to release 750 million genetically modified mosquitoes in Key West, Florida, starting this summer and carrying on through 2022. They plan to expand the experiment to include Harris County, Texas as well.

The Oxitec GMO mosquito project is aimed at making it so that the progeny of normal female mosquitoes who mate with male GMO mosquitoes are rendered less viable to survive to maturity. This leads to the “temporary collapse of a wild population.”  One has to wonder how both the altered mosquitoes and the environmental collapses might affect other insects, birds, and mammals that feed on the mosquitoes.

It’s amazing to me that this got the go-ahead from both the Environmental Protection Agency (that’s what they call it, anyway) and the State of Florida, particularly during this time of a heavily studied but still poorly understood pandemic of theoretically zoonotic origins, environmental issues notwithstanding. 

The experiment’s approvals came over the objections of local residents and environmental groups who assert that the risks have not been seriously analyzed. A number of environmental groups plan to sue the EPA over the matter. 

I get that mosquitoes are a real problem for us, spawning serious diseases. I also get that the expressed intent of engineering the GMO mosquitoes is to ultimately reduce the threatening population. I am sorry, though, genetically modifying the composition of life itself to address our problems is not an acceptable approach.

We are not God, not the universe, and we are absolute neophytes in our understanding of our world and its complex interrelationships. I trust no man or woman to act in such a capacity, altering the very design of earth’s creatures.

This is not science. It’s a crap shoot.

Tampering with the genetics of life on this earth is dangerous business. We really have no idea what the ultimate ramifications are or could be. Nor will we know the broad answers to that question in the space of a season, or a year, or ten years.

This is not Oxitec’s first foray into such experimentation. From 2013 to 2015, they released 450,000 GMO mosquitoes every week in the vicinity of Jacobina, Brazil. The results from that experiment were touted as successful, but are, in fact, unclear, when you consider a Yale study that raised questions about the unintended results of the experiment. Of course, Oxitec rebutted such concerns, and what do you know, here we are getting ready to do it again. 

I imagine that when the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is one of your investors, it helps to grease the skids.

Beyond the unknown impacts of these experiments, it is also disturbing to ponder the notion that once you get comfortable modifying plants, and then mosquitoes, bats, and who knows what else, how long will it be before they come to genetically modify You for whatever purposes?

It’s just not that hard to imagine a government somewhere applying that kind of technology in more disturbing ways. Even as we read about the GMO mosquitoes, we learn that China is amassing a vast database of DNA information, sending its police out to collect blood samples from its male population, including children.

At the same time, worldwide, many people have, in the course of a few short months, learned to desire wide scale testing, clamor for a vaccine, and accept the idea of contact tracing. 

It is just not that great a leap to imagine GMO being put to unacceptable and unimaginably dangerous uses.

Conspiracies or not, entities like the Gates Foundation have their hand in all of this.

I trust no profiteering humans, no matter how benevolent the veneer may be polished, to mess around with life in such a fashion. 

NO to GMO.  

fear culture: not a marker for good health

As we go back to ‘normal’, whatever that was (scratching head), it turns out there’s nothing normal at all. 

Everyone is skittish and leery of each other. All of our cultural activities, aside from protesting, are gone. It’s no fun to eat out with all the crazy protocols, even if you’re brave enough to go. There’s no singing together, no music events, even outdoors. No hugs, no pats on the back except at home. I can’t imagine who’s going to theaters and how that’s going to be done. Schools – I cannot fathom what we are thinking about doing to kids by placing them in what will be such unnatural environments. Doing anything where other people are around is a production. 

And the masks, everywhere the masks.

I can’t help but ask, what exactly is healthy about all this? I think more and more that what we’ve done is to actually create a very unhealthy environment. The constant drumming of fear along with the lack of community and culture are health detractors. For some people, it can be a killer. 

The people most at risk for COVID-19, we are told, are folks with underlying conditions. Just yesterday, I noticed articles mentioning that obesity is a big risk factor. Certain commonly prescribed drugs also seem to play a role. Heart disease, diabetes, the list goes on. Wouldn’t it make sense, rather than enforcing mask rules, strange protocols, and surveillance on everyone, to instead focus on getting and living healthy in the first place?

When I go to the grocery store, I can’t help but notice what’s promoted in the aisles and what people are putting in their carts. And it’s. not. healthy. How can we be surprised when it turns out there’s lots of people with underlying problems?

I don’t blame people. We have been rigorously trained via education and media to adopt unhealthy lifestyles. People are also victims of class problems that create unhealthy ways of living. Our health industry compounds the problems by pushing us toward drugs and procedures rather than working to create actual good health. No, the culpability rests at the door of government and the corporations making bank on all of our ‘normal’ woes. We do, however, have individual responsibility to ask questions, seek truth, and demand peace and justice at every level including our physical health.

If we’re going to rise above this crazy time, as we seek better lives for everyone, we can make the simple choice to live healthy and to help other people live healthy. 

The obvious first step is to go vegan, or at least to head in that direction. I know it’s a bitter pill for some people, but it really doesn’t have to be that way. Moving away from an animal-centric diet not only directly impacts one’s individual health in a positive way, it also supports the elimination of one of the biggest potential disease-spreading industries out there. Plus, it’s good for the animals and the earth, big time.

Pesticides. Herbicides. GMO. Antibiotics. Water contamination. That’s before you even get to excess fat. It’s kind of a no-brainer when you think about underlying conditions, isn’t it?

There may be a scary illness going around, but what we’ve done in response to it is terrifying and unnatural. Let’s back out of the fear culture. Let’s take responsibility for ourselves and get healthy. Going vegan is a great first step. 

what the other animals know

My best friend seems unaware of the only thing that anyone talks about anymore. Coronavirus is not a thing to him. He appears to feel no fear and no trepidation. He has never worn a mask.

No, Tippy spends his days more concerned about things like the birds and the squirrels that he spots outside the window. He notices the trees in the wind, or the first pitter patters of a rainfall. He loves to nap. And, thankfully, he loves to spend time with me.

As a cat, Tippy does not spend inordinate hours scouring the news. He could really care less. He has his priorities. Aside from eating, pooping, sleeping, and tracking anything that moves, he values being close to me. He likes to sit with me while reading, lay on top of me asleep in bed, position himself in the middle of anything on which I am working. He follows me around.

I have a sneaking suspicion that he knows more than I do, than we all do.

For one thing, he has instincts, and he trusts them. To the letter.

He knows the difference between an actual, existential threat and mind games. Were a big dog to come into view, there is no doubt Tippy would make himself scarce.

That’s not to say that Tippy doesn’t pick up on vibes. He is, after all, my best friend. It’s clear, he ‘gets’ things. He can tell when I’m sad or scared or tense. He knows when I’m awake, staring into the dark. I don’t think he cares at all about what is going on that might affect my frame of mind, but I think he cares a lot about my frame of mind.

Every animal that has graced my life has been a teacher. They have shown me love and patience and humor and joy and tender compassion. Sometimes I have been witness to their fear, suffering, incomprehension, death. I have grown from every encounter – from my beloved cat friend to the cardinal singing in the tree or the snake slithering away from my approaching foot.

With our culture’s anthropocentric perspective, we suppose we know so much more than the other animals. Or the trees, for that matter. We’re all about our brains, and all that we’re able to accomplish with them.

While it is true that amazing and wonderful things have been born of the human brain, we don’t honor how little we really know. Nor do we own the many detrimental purposes to which we put those brains, on a grand scale. The other animals do not behave that way.

I suspect they are, in actuality, more highly evolved than humans. They are extremely observant and they understand the priorities. 

Like Tippy, they pay attention to the fundamentals of life – food, water, air, sunshine, exercise, relaxation, play, shelter, relationships, tribe. They tend to all that without leaving an indecipherable and disproportionate path of destruction. Nor do they just muck around with their own or other species for gratuitous or ruinous ends.

They live in sync with life.

But as the almighty human species, look what we do to the animals. We pen many of them up for their entire shortened lives, use them, abuse them, kill them, eat them in incomprehensible numbers, all while wreaking destruction across the planet.

Maybe the fact that the other animals seem incapable of doing that to us isn’t evidence of their ignorance but in truth shows us how truly advanced they are.

I think during this pensive time it might be wise to ponder the idea that the other animals know more than we do. Maybe give some thoughtful consideration to how they walk their life paths.

My wise and wonderful best friend Tippy never touches on the news, but he reminds me daily about the important things of life and the elements of true health.