The used book store has a Religion section of 3 stacks in the basement, but a Judaica section on the main floor with more books than would fill a NYC studio apartment, stacked one on top of each other.

You see a dude walking down the sidewalk – and yes, that’s a white pet lab rat on his shoulder. (or, a Rhesus monkey – I’ve seen that, too)

There’s a dude in the subway playing a piano.  A. Piano.

And all manner of other decent musicians plying their wares, as pictured.

And pro-reform supporters start to outnumber critics at townhall meetings. Huzzah!

You can find the phone numbers for your Senators and Representatives on this website by entering your ZIP code at the left of the page:
http://www.congress.org/congressorg/directory/congdir.tt

When I was 19, I was raped by an acquaintance after a college party.  As a result, I left school for a year and went into regular psychiatric therapy, which was  covered by my parents’ excellent health insurance through my dad’s job.  When I turned 22, I was no longer eligible for my parents’ coverage, and went out to look for my own coverage.  I was no longer in therapy, so I was just looking for the basics – coverage for regular check-ups and rare trips to the doctor.

Within a year, I had submitted applications for coverage to four major health care providers and was rejected by all of them.  When I finally pushed aggressively with a customer service representative from Aetna, I learned that health insurance companies maintain a black-list of “pre-existing conditions” and treatments on the basis of which they will deny your request for coverage.

Solely because I had been in therapy to process the trauma of my sexual assault and related depression, I was denied coverage by Aetna, United Health Care, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Kaiser Permanente.

I am extremely grateful that my parents have been able to support me so that I could receive health care outside of the insurance system, paying out of pocket.  I’ve also been lucky enough that I traveled overseas on vacation and for work and could receive health care then.  But how many of the 12 million Americans without insurance (over 4m of whom have tried to get insurance like me) have a backup like this?  Our system is broken, and discriminates against the people who need health care the most.

Some have said to me that I should have tried harder to ‘game’ the system before I was off my parents’ health insurance, paying out of pocket for health care instead of going through my insurance so there would be no record of preexisting conditions.  But isn’t this what insurance is for?  Isn’t this why (starting in June) I pay $90 a month for the insurance I now get through my employer?  This kind of cynicism helps no one, because we can, indeed, change the system.  What was built by men can be dismantled and reformed by men.

Even if the health care debate seems far removed from your life, know that our broken system disenfranchises many people with whom you share loving relationships, friendships, and acquaintances.  Please pick up the phone NOW and call your elected representatives in Congress and tell them we need health care reform with a robust public option.

You can find the phone numbers for your Senators and Representatives on this website by entering your ZIP code at the left of the page:
http://www.congress.org/congressorg/directory/congdir.tt

Calling your elected reps is very easy – when a staffperson answers the phone, you should let them know you’re a constituent from the Congressman’s district and then let them know that you support health care reform, and you can let them know why.  If you want to be aggressive, you can insist on speaking with the staff person who is handling health reform legislation.

There’s nothing like sweating over a hot bowl of $.50 Top Ramen in 90degree weather, I discovered today, to bring back memories of my childhood.  When it was too hot to really cook a hot meal and summer days made us feel lazy, we would take a couple of packages of ramen, prepare them with about half the water recommended, and add some chopped spring onion from the freezer, maybe some japanese fish cake, and an egg right at the end (so the egg would be soft-poached).  My mom still serves ramen with some Korean pickled diakon radish (the yellow kind), with some rice vinegar, and maybe some kimchee.

I remember the big white bowls with blue flower patterns and scalloped edges we’d eat from – when I was four, I tried to take one of these bowls, full of steaming-hot ramen, off the kitchen counter in our home in Stamford, CT and ended up with burns completely down my chest.   I had to wait for two years until I could get my own bowl from off the counter again.

It’s been ages since I last ate ramen, but I made it today – with an egg, some frozen fish cake, and frozen spring onions.  I found myself eating at the same pace, slurping all the way, as in my childhood, and of course I saved the egg yolk for last – which I scooped into my mouth and ate whole, just like when I was 4 years old.

So here’s the list I’ve been ruminating on for several weeks – the list of people I come across on the subway and am grateful for, and even share some love with:

• Musicians (good, bad, classical, opera, doowop, mariachi – doesn’t matter)
• People who give up their seats for the elderly, pregnant women, and children
• Riders who like to stay present (i.e., those who are not slaves to their iPods)
• Friendly folks
• Tourists (it’s wonderful to surprise them by being nice)
• Babies and small children
• Meditators (I’m not the only one who does metta meditation on the subway, it turns out!)

On the musicians – I’ve been moved many times in the subway by music of varying calibers.  One night a few months ago, dreading walking for another minute, I entered the 14th ACEL station after walking the High Line.  I was set on not moving an inch until the C came, but then I heard a plaintive, desperately sad version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”, played on the harmonica.  I begrudged my legs to walk a little further – just to the source of the music, and then enough.  Lo, I found the gentleman pictured, looking like he came straight from the Dust Bowl in the Depression and then someone gave him a pair of fashionable new jeans.  I gave him a dollar and two apples I’d bought earlier at the farmer’s market, and as I boarded the train, he started in a new song – this time it was “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.”  I wondered if he didn’t mean to sound a note of irony, drawing a link between the Depression of the 20s and the recession of the 00s, or if he was just sincere – or rather, sinsir.

Amanda Lo is another musician I had the good fortune to see perform on more than one occasion, on the platform for the NRD&F heading to Brooklyn.  She’s a gifted classical violinist but more impressive is her demeanor – leaning there against the benches and carefree enough to laugh (not maliciously) when my sunglasses fell of my head and into her violin case as I stooped down to give her a dollar.

Speaking of classical musicians, I had seen a young boy – 11-years-old – playing a keyboard in the Union Station subway station for several weeks now, always accompanied by his father.  I suspected a bad situation and talking to the cops I sometimes see hanging out looking very useful*, but finally had the gall to investigate myself and talk to the boy’s father (always wearing an identical outfit with the boy, btw).  The father, from Ecuador but here for 20 years, talked about how his son played for money so that he could pay for more piano lessons, and buy music and more equipment.  While I took his persistent affirmations that playing in the subway made his son happy with a grain of salt, I felt I at least needed to identify with this man I see skulking in the subway everyday as a human being and not just some anonymous child abuser.  As a child, I had to be dragged to the piano everyday to practice, so I think I have an aggressively protective inclination when it comes to young pianists.  Even if what the father says is not true, I still feel better (maybe I shouldn’t?).

Part of writing this post is about sharing my commitment to connect with those who would otherwise be not only complete strangers in the city but possibly soul-less automatons for all I knew – by making eye contact, sharing a smile, and saying hello and thank you.  Oh yes, and by sending them metta (loving kindness) once in a while.  I’ve found that, although I cannot know what impact I have on anyone else’s life, I like it – it feels good.  And I invite you to try it – you may just find love on the subway, too.

But soon, I promise.

Here’s the short version: Hawai’i is an amazing, wonderful place – one that I may earnestly seek moving to.  In April of 2007, I went to Maui for my cousin Eric’s wedding.  Maui has some beautiful and lush spots, but the Big Island takes those few lush spots, magnifies them, and populates an entire island with them.  We saw everything from endless landscapes of broken lava as sharp as glass to misty grazing land that suggested we were in the Scottish Isles and not Hawai’i to green cliffs abutting deep blue ocean.  There were black sand beaches, white sand beaches, and a green sand beach.  The sun was hot, but the breeze was always soothing.

Spending time on the islands, one becomes intimately familiar with the concepts of Aloha and Mana.  People in Hawai’i are the nicest you have ever met, embracing aloha – friendliness, warmth, and welcome.  Standing inside the Mo’okini Heiau on the northern tip of the island – an ancient religious ritual structure built in the 400s AD and site of human sacrifices, I could not but help feel the gravitas of the place and a sacred feeling derived instrinsically linked to the awesome natural setting around us – Mana.

It’s a really magical place, and I’ll do my best to share that by posting this video soon!

*Many thanks to Nate Kirby-Glatkowski, whose detailed map of the sites of the Big Island (drawn and written on the cocktail napkin pictured) proved to be our vacation bible, second only to our Lonely Planet guide.

Posts forthcoming on my amazing new job at Global Zero as their Field Organizer (Woohoo!), which I start upon my return.

In the meantime, a trailer for a film I’d love to see, about vipassana (insight) meditation in a maximum security penitentiary in Alabama.

I e-met Robert Kesten, ED of the Center for Screentime Awareness, through the founder of “TV Turnoff Week”, Henry LaBalme.  I met Henry when I was 16-years-old, because he came to my high school to accept an alumni recognition award for his service to the community.

I talked to Henry in the dining hall after his acceptance speech and told him I had heard about Turnoff Week before and planned to participate, because I had read about it in Adbusters magazine.  He asked where I found a copy of Adbusters in rural Connecticut, and was relatively blown away to find out that the school’s library carried the counter-culture magazine.  A high point of a 16-year-old’s life.

Little did I know that my socially conscientious behavior – kids in middle school teased me by calling me “GreenPeace” because of my social activism – would one day be seen as emblematic of my generation!  I was pleasantly surprised to see an article on the changes in MTV’s programming to more “pro-social” shows – why?  Because of us millenials, of course.  But then, this got me really excited:

• “This season, 19 percent fewer households are tuning in on average during prime time than in the 2002-3 season, according to Nielsen Media Research. About 1 million individual viewers, on average, tuned in for prime time in 2002-3, compared with 775,000 this season. MTV executives say a better measure is overall total day ratings, and by this measure MTV is down about 13 percent since 2002-2003.”

Is it possible that fewer people are watching TV?  Robert would know.

Which brings me back to Turnoff Week 2009!  This year’s events kick off with events at Barnes & Nobles around the country, and you can download an organizer’s kit on their website to participate.

It’s funny, but I sorta wish that Screentime.org was better organized.  I know, it’s twisted that I want proponents of getting away from screens to spend more time in front of their screens so I can use their website more easily. But I figure, the faster I can find the info I want on an off-screen Turnoff Week event in my area, the faster I can get out into the sunshine and away from this damned screen.

It’s a sunny day so I’m not going to be on the interweb long, but wanted to share two interesting bits from the NYTmes

James Fallows, the political writer with the Atlantic Magazine who has been living in China for almost 2 years now, made a quick observation about tea preferences among his Atlantic colleagues here.  And following the links, you eventually come to Corby Krummer’s bit that’s actually about tea, but opens with a well-deserved swipe at the stage-managed or “astroturf” (as in, fake grassroots) protest tea parties across the country on Tax Day.

I’ve already sent a gift box of teas – including my favorites, Vanilla Citrus Oolong and Shiso Sencha, but also a superb premium-grade Dragon’s Well and Gongfu Black (the leaves are picked and bruised by hand!) – from Arogya Teas in Westport, CT to a friend working in the White House and my friends at Digital Democracy.  I may just end up making a habit out of it since tea is so hot these days.

NYT on Astroturf Tea Parties

Oh, and I watched this YouTube video today, which almost made me cry!

Noel is the founder of Co-Working Brooklyn at The Change You Want To See gallery, along with Beka Economopoulos, among other things….

In exchange for this gift of new information, I shared a story with Noel that I first heard in a 10-day meditation retreat in Illinois:

One day, a very angry Brahmin came to the temple, intent on hurling insults and slander on Gautama the Buddha.  As a Brahmin who had built up a religious cult of his own, his livelihood was under threat from the teachings of the Buddha, which were becoming more and more widely accepted in the land.

When this Brahmin arrived, he spewed all manner of insults at the Buddha.  The Buddha just sat there.  When there was finally a quiet moment, the Buddha asked, calmly, “Tell me, sir.  There must be many people who come to your house to pay their respects.  Is that true?”

“Yes, of course it’s true.  I’m very highly regarded,” the vitriolic Brahmin replied.

“And often times they bring you gifts, isn’t that true?”

“Yes, supplicants almost always bring me gifts.”

“When a supplicant brings you a gift you have no desire for, do you accept it?”

“No,” the Brahmin replied.  “I don’t have to accept it.  Either I toss it in the rubbish heap or it stays with them.”

“Well,” the Buddha replied, “you have brought me this gift of your harsh and slanderous words, but I do not want them.  So there, all of your anger, your hatred, your ill will – I will not accept it.  And so it stays with you.”

I love this story because it comes in especially handy for those of us in fields that are remotely political, as we have to deal with vitriolic, irrational, or frustrated individuals relatively often.  And more often than not, the harsh words and vitriol are coming from the very people we call allies and colleagues.

I remember this story often and try to do the same – realize that reciprocating anger and frustration is a choice.  I can choose not to be angry – this also means, however, that I cannot blame someone else for making me angry.

And all that responsibility can feel like a significant burden.  But it can also be quite liberating.