Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer · 8 Comments

Mana March

I don’t usually write about politics, but the “Mana March” I participated in on Sunday was more than political…

Some of the world’s largest agricultural biotech companies have taken up 15,000 acres of Kauai land to test genetically modified crops. A part of their process involves massive amounts of pesticide use. About 18 tons of “restricted use pesticides” are sprayed annually (Atrazine to name one, which was banned in Europe in 2004), as well as employing at least five times that amount of ‘non-restricted’ pesticides, which are potentially just as harmful.

One company, Pioneer DuPont, has been recorded as applying these pesticides to their crops between 10 – 16 times a day, at least 250 days a year. There are currently no buffer zones to protect nearby schools, neighborhoods or waterways from the drift or seepage of these toxic pesticides. Currently, the agribusiness companies utilizing Kauai’s 15,000 acres for their genetically modified crop experiments, refuse to disclose the exact chemicals being used, when, or where.

Residents of the surrounding community where these crops are located are reporting unexplained illnesses. Babies are being born with strange, life-long defects. Doctors, nurses and teachers are voicing concern, especially for children, who’s developing bodies (in utero and in maturing years) are most susceptible to the harmful effects of these chemicals.

A bill, titled Bill 2491, has been created to insist that our island have a right to know what pesticides are being used and that a buffer zone be created around drift-prone areas, especially schools. It also insists that environmental evaluations begin to determine the safety of these chemicals, implementing restrictions when necessary.

Sunday, Jeb, the Bohemian, and I walked with about 4,000 Kauaians down Rice Street to the County building in support of Bill 2491. The demonstration is said to have been the largest in our small island’s history.

This issue of Genetically Modified Foods, pesticide use, and monoculture farming is complex and multi-layered. There is much that I have yet to learn.

One thing I do know, you have to care for the earth in order for it to care for you.

For myself, for my island, and for our children, I walked to represent this truth.  It was one  small gesture, but with 4,000 strong, it was many steps in the right direction.

2013-09-09_Boh stps

2013-09-09_Boh Jeb

islanders, as far as the eye can see
islanders, as far as the eye can see

Check out the Garden Island Newspaper’s report:

http://thegardenisland.com/news/local/mana-march-draws-thousands/article_04ff6c36-190b-11e3-b902-001a4bcf887a.html

And for more information on GMO experiments on Kauai, here’s a FACT page from www.stoppoisoningparadise.org.

Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer · 1 Comment

Getting It

I grind coffee in the dark while my family sleeps. This is my routine.

In this ritual with splashing water and spoons, I sift the inner recesses for inspiration. If the Archives are chronicles of the everyday, what does the muse have for this morning?

All is well. There is half and half in the refrigerator, this summer’s mango harvest is stacked in the freezer. Life is stocked. But this morning draws a blank.

Until that ever-so-quiet whisper. Read the Jan Frazier…

Gifted to me two months ago, and still yet to be read, the ebook “Opening the Door – Jan Frazier Teachings on Awakening” was finally unearthed from my neglected email inbox last night.

Following a lead this morning – what the heck – I open the PDF and find it randomly positioned to page 16. What follows are some excerpts from the chapter “Where is the Beloved?”.

The words are a cosmic wink, with the joke all on me. I get it, because I just don’t yet get it.

I’m waiting for that deep, full-knowing belly laugh.  But until then, maybe I’ll just try softening.  Rest my head.

“Put your head down, and don’t fall asleep. Just lie with your eyes closed and see if you can feel what it would feel like to have nothing weighing on you, to know that you would never again have to strain at anything, or worry, or wonder if you’ll ever be happy. See if you can feel what relief there would be if you knew, absolutely knew, that the rest of your life would be effortless. That all was radically well, and would be, even though bad things would keep happening. That somehow, for the rest of forever, you would be soft and peaceful and laughing inside, no matter what hand you were dealt. Feel it, feel it. You owe this to yourself. If you never let yourself sink into the deliciousness of what seems so impossible, how will longing ever get a chance to start up?

This is not a fairy tale. This possible thing is as real as a tree, as real as politics, as the roots that hold the tree to the ground, as real as the newspaper and its stories…What do I need to do to get this across? It is as real as gravity, as the orbits of the planets, as lightning, as photosynthesis, as grime in a bathtub, as a car accident, real as the crown of a bloody baby’s head pressing against its mother’s tearing flesh.

The truth is, it is more real than these things, and yet it is hardly seen, hardly felt, let alone directly known.

It is emptiness. It is nothing, but it is everything, it is all, and these are just words. What good are they? Will they make a bridge across which feet can walk? Will they make a trapdoor through which a body can drop? A soft place for a head to sink to?

How maddening it is for one to know this, to know it is there, it is real, and yet it cannot be found. How I want to lay my coat over every mud puddle, lace my fingers into a stirrup to hoist a tired foot over the wall, how I want to operate on every pair of eyes to make them finally see, to see what is right in front of them, of us all, everywhere and always. How I want to put my hands on every single head and gently turn it, direct the attention toward this, this and nothing but this. There is nothing else to look for, nothing else to care about, nothing else to believe in…

It is not so awfully hard. Truly. Once you know this, you will marvel that you ever could have supposed it was otherwise.

Life is short.”

2013-09-05_naupaka sky