Category: Uncategorized

Acceptance.
Can I accept?
Which phrase don’t I understand?
And so it is.
It is what it is.
Being.
Being Here and Now.
Being OK with the Here and Now.
The Now.
Now.
Now is perfect.

I am alright with Now, and I Love the Being Here and Now most often, and I know that what Is often just Is, and can’t be changed.

But………
Presently, I must Accept the dying of two dear friends. One will precede the other within the year. And if not in a year, then too soon. The loss of two people who I turn to for love, answers.

Both know of their impending death from cancer. They have time to process and make peace and Accept. Just as I must come to Accept that these two dearest ones will soon be unavailable physically. They’ll still give me answers, if I’m open to listen to them. But the physical here and now of contact will be gone.

It is Yom Kippur today, and I can’t stop thinking of them.

One is Laura. She recently gave me one of the greatest gifts one could receive: words of wisdom that penetrate one’s soul. Words which ring true as soon as they are heard, which cut to the quick, which must be examined, pondered, thus made my own, taken into my being. Once I caught their meaning, her words had the power to change my frame of reference, my angle of vision, my point of view, and I opened to the hormonal shifts which this new perspective created: a peaceful cascade of cellular changes. Her wisdom and power has now totally infused me, has become part of my fabric, my new truth. Laura’s words were the catalyst to help shift my focus, thus shift my pain/discomfort level.

I spent two wonderful days at Laura’s home in Willits, less than one mile from where Margaret and I had lived. Being there was comforting to me on a very deep level. It felt easy to be there, easy to talk and try to make myself useful with cooking and small chores. And my comfort in her home was increased by the presence of Margaret’s favorite chair and some artwork which Laura purchased after Margaret’s death. So I was surrounded by pieces of my old home, as well as Laura’s love.

Laura has terminal breast cancer which has spread to her liver, lungs, and spine. Her most recent bout of chemo therapy has made her bald, revealing a very beautiful head. She is graceful beyond words. She glides across the floor when up, and gestures gracefully with her hands when sitting, which is usually the case; her stamina is poor.

Sitting and talking in her living room on the first of our two days together, I complained that my soul, when I am in southern California, my current home, is not being fed. “My soul’s not being fed there.”

And she wisely replyed,: “No, it is being fed, you just don’t like what it’s being fed. It’s bitter, and you want sweet.”

These were her Words of Wisdom which jolted my being. Which caused my positive shift of perspective. After pondering her reply, I had an epiphany: Who is responsible for what my soul eats/is fed? Why me, only I alone am responsible. (Excluding Grace of Course, which may feed our soul without our doing, out of the blue, a blessing.) So I’ve gone about my life here in southern California with a lighter step, with more daily joy, with mindfulness of feeding my soul.

This is just one very small piece of what this woman Laura has given me. She is my dear friend and I don’t want to lose her. I know it is “only” on the physical plane, but this plane houses the specific soul package of Laura, who I can phone and ask: “Now tell me again, how do cells communicate?” She always explains things so easily and gracefully. She is one of the smartest people I know. She is a physician, can learn/figure out anything, has tremendous, true insight, is vulnerable, is self aware. She is a graceful and wise woman. And what an honor to witness her beauty, grace, and wisdom.

She shared the eulogy she wrote for herself, and I have her permission to quote from it:
“I do believe that surrendering to Divine will allows the Universe to work in ways that are infinitely benign, although unfathomable. My surrender was a daily commitment, and some days were easier than others. But even the bliss of total surrender embraces the very human grief we feel with loss.”

Quote from Michael Pollan’s editorial in this morning’s N.Y. Times, as a reaction to President Obama’s speech to Congress last nite:
“Even the most efficient health care system that the administration could hope to devise would still confront a rising tide of chronic disease linked to diet.

That’s why our success in bringing health care costs under control ultimately depends on whether Washington can summon the political will to take on and reform a second, even more powerful industry: the food industry.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, three-quarters of health care spending now goes to treat “preventable chronic diseases.” Not all of these diseases are linked to diet — there’s smoking, for instance — but many, if not most, of them are.
Cheap food is going to be popular as long as the social and environmental costs of that food are charged to the future. There’s lots of money to be made selling fast food and then treating the diseases that fast food causes. One of the leading products of the American food industry has become patients for the American health care industry.”

Michael Pollan Rocks!!! Keep Telling It Like It Is!!!!

Hello FDA,
I do hope that someone there is listening:
Please do NOT allow our disease producing food industry to use their new:

Smart Choices Program

to mislead the public by adding their newest trick,
a green check mark “Smart Choice” label to food packages.

As Marion Nestle (Professor of Nutrition/Food Studies at N.Y. University) so aptly stated, “This is just another gimmick of the food industry. People need to be eating food which is as UNPROCESSED as possible.”

Please FDA, do not allow “food” such as Froot Loops to get this industry generated Smart (Stupid) Choice label.

Our food industry has mis-informed the American consumer for decades.

They are the new Tobacco Industry – creating disease and death, and getting away with it.

INSTEAD: Why not the FDA create a TRUE Smart Choice Label: with a big fat RED X marked on all disease creating food, such as:

~~food with greater than 50% refined flour

~~food with greater than 30% of calories from refined sugars

~~food with greater than 200 mg sodium per serving

~~food which contains trans fat

~~food which contains greater than 30% saturated fat

I am a retired Registered Dietitian and know the pain and suffering caused by our present food industry, and especially our fast food industry.

Thank You,

Mary Farkas, M.S., M.A. Retired R.D.

Let the FDA hear from YOU: [email protected]

I wrote this to Barack today. The White House has a place for each of us to post a letter to our President. I want him to be My President; that’s why I voted for him. I am not naive, I am not angry.

But my soul is weary. I am tired of seeing lines of thousands waiting for health care from Remote Area Medical, a non-profit originally set up to serve the poor in “non-developed” nations. I am tired of seeing starving children in African nations torn by war. I am tired of hearing stories of brutality to women and children, and seeing their lives disrupted by refuge camps, rape, torture, lack of everything; I am tired of knowing that 1 in 6 people do not have access to clean water. I am weary of the Insanity that passes for human adulthood.

So I wrote a letter to Barack. It doesn’t address ALL of the things I’m weary of, but it’s a way to put my voice into the world, like a prayer. We put the voice of our soul into the world.

Dear Sir, Mr. Obama, My President,
I write to you as a life long Democrat who was even a Young Democrat in my youth, a Retired Registered Dietitian living on a fixed income, a Lesbian, a daughter of a Holocaust Survivor, a Concerned Loyal Citizen of our Nation.

I voted for you because you said Vote for Me and You Will Get Change. I voted for Change. I voted for a Paradigm Shift. I voted for a Brave Leader to Tackle the Hard, but Necessary Changes we must make.

We must change our system of medicine, which rewards doctors intervening when truly, it’s too too late. The African-American woman with hypertension, diabetes, arthritis, maybe even some gastro-esophageal reflux, and over-weight or obesity; this woman who is working full time, caring for her grandchildren, relying on Fast Food to feed her family (McDonalds has a new: 365 Black web site, even); this woman doesn’t need a Health Care Machine that eats one-sixth of our budget. No. This woman needs rest, sleep, good quality food, and security of work. When she has this, she will not have the “life-style” diseases which are a hallmark of our obese and poor. Hell, even the Insane Repuglicans are fat (and poor in their souls and minds).

Please, please, please assure passage of MEANINGFUL HEALTH REFORM: a government run insurance alternative with Preventive Care reimbursement (including Medical Nutrition Therapy and Physical Therapy); a government led campaign to change our present School Lunch requirements to those which support, not destroy, health. Tax shifts which begin to punish the purveyors of food which creates disease.

The best defense against Swine Flu or ANY infection is a healthy immune system. Subsidize those foods which promote immune health.

I Love You. I am Grateful, Daily, To God, Goddess, The Creator that You Are My President. Be My President.
Mary Farkas, M.S., M.A.
my website: www.eldermuse.net

Did you catch the depths of emotion on Barack’s face, a few minutes before Teddy’s casket was removed from the hearse by the eight service men. (I had to wonder why at least ONE female military member couldn’t be included……)
I believe I now understand Barack’s high head tilt, with neck extended, his chin jutting in the air, eyes sometimes closed. This posture has intrigued me for months now. So unlike other politicians who seek the camera on their entire face.

This morning sitting with Michelle solemn by his side, his grief was visable, nay, almost palpable. His heaving deep sigh, quivering chin, and clenched jaw. Holding back tears. He lost the woman he loved the longest in his life, his maternal grandmother, less than a year ago.

I now comprehend that his tilted head is how he can take a private moment for himself, amist any size crowd, any number of cameras attempting to intrude.

More thanks are in order to people in today’s world who can see past the insanity. Today I Thank: David Goldhill who wrote an enlightening piece about our health care system.
I quote from his piece in September’s The Atlantic (http://www.theatlantic.com/):
How American Health Care Killed My Father:

“Accidentally, but relentlessly, America has built a health-care system
with incentives that inexorably generate terrible and perverse
results. Incentives that emphasize health care over any other aspect
of health and well-being. That emphasize treatment over prevention.
That disguise true costs. That favor complexity, and discourage
transparent competition based on price or quality. That result in
a generational pyramid scheme rather than sustainable financing.
And that – most important – remove consumers from our irreplaceable
role as the ultimate ensurer of value.”

He systematically looks at a hospital and health care behemoth which will take more than a trillion dollars to feed, and which takes tax dollars AWAY form the needs which truly affect our health: nutrition (yes, righting our horrible food system which is the cause of fully one-third of all cancers, and all of our “lifestyle” diseases), exercise, education, emotional security, our natural environment, and public safety.

Goldhill writes, “By what mechanism does society determine that an extra, say, $100 billion for health care will make us healthier than even $10 billion for cleaner air or water, or $25 billion for better nutrition, or $5 billion for parks….. The answer is, no mechanism at all. Health care simply keeps gobbling up national resources, seemingly without regard to other societal needs…..”

And David Goldhill looked into the monster of health care after his father died from an iatrogenic infection passed on by doctors who didn’t wash their hands.
Oh Semmelweis would be rolling in his grave.

I must walk twice daily to feed my desire to feel the sky
the near constant breeze, the air on my face.
I need this as much as I need/desire my two cups of strong
black tea each morning.

I love to feel how my body moves through the air
interacting with the sounds, large and small,
and the flying creatures that are at eye level;
sometimes even a precious butterfly.

I watch for the creatures at my feet, small lizards mostly,
these seem to be in all hot climes. Their beings on walls
or sidewalks have given me delight in Arizona, Florida,
New Mexico, India, Israel, Mexico, and Peru.
And now here in desert heat that is southern California.

I am making peace with being here.

The twice daily walks help me to experience the fact of air,
temperature, plants and creatures, my surroundings,
the physicality of this part of the earth that I inhabit.

The act of being in the space of the world, allowing my body
to feel the world, allowing my mind to connect to my Creator,
to connect to what is good in my life; this brings me joy
and routine.

Anytime a soul can be outdoors, she is free to make peace
with her life. Free to see a perspective broader than the
confines of her home walls and mind.

When two people you love
seemingly more than life
die suddenly, unexpectedly;
both less than six months apart…
it more than unsettles, more than upsets.
So very much more.

Such that after four years since my sister’s death,
and three and a half years after Margaret’s death,
I experience a profound, but commonplace/
everyday awareness of Death;
others’ and my own.
I take nothing for granted.
Everyday may be my last. May be their last.

This awareness becomes OK. Is OK. A given.
Matter of fact.
The awareness of the impermanence
of everyone, even everything.

I don’t dwell on this awareness,
just as I don’t dwell on the fact of the weather.
It is what is and I can’t change it.
This awareness of dissolution is just there,
as part of my given.

And it doesn’t make me sad, or angry, or
anything much; most of the time.

Then there are the times, still the times,
when the impermanence of it all
links with remembrance of something about her;
one or both of them. Margaret or Lexi.

In those melting times, they are as close to my heart and mind
as if they were still here. Still part of my life.
As if I can touch them,
because I can certainly talk with them.

Then I always laugh. Out loud. And say their name. Out loud.
Sometimes over and over.
I give a shout of pure joy, sheer glee.
To be able to feel them again.

It’s in these moments that the impermanence becomes permanence.
Change becomes constant.
Dissolution is an illusion.
Death becomes Life.
Life again, always wins over death.
My memory of those I loved
and knew intimately, personally,
allows them to live again.

In my heart.

Another deserving gentleman to Thank: Michael Pollan. Thank you Michael for telling the truth about the food we eat. Your latest N.Y. Times piece deals with the paradox of Americans watching cooking shows, but not cooking. We sit for hours on end watching someone else create dishes and meals, then go out to eat, or order-in “take out.” You tell us how cooking is integral to our humanness. How cooking our food allowed our brains to expand, allowed our human communities to develop. How our lack of cooking is hurting us terribly.

The following is an open letter to Robert Kenner, director & producer of Food Inc.

Dear Mr. Kenner,
Thank You for your new film: Food Inc. It is a masterpiece of reporting and exposure of some of the darkest secrets in our nation. (As Jon Stewart said in his interview of you: It’s the Abu Ghraib of our food industry.) We have an industrialized food network superstructure (farming, cattle, hogs, chickens, food production, packaging, distribution, sales, marketing, end user consumption) which has become “too big to fail.”

This interwoven food system mimics the inter-dependent, global network of financial institutions which were “too big to fail”, but they did. The failure of our bankers, rating agencies, government regulators, etc. etc. created havoc, pain, misery, major disruption in people’s lives. This disruption was no worse than what some “terrorist” organization could have done to the core of American lives. Obama’s administration has set about to alter the playing field of the financial game so that it never again allows AIG monsters which are “too big to fail.”

But, apparently no one is stopping the insanity of an industrialized food system which is “too big to fail.” And when THIS system fails, it will leave not “just” havoc, homelessness and major life disruption, it will leave the DEATH of thousands of Americans. What’s to stop another e. coli outbreak from killing “only” dozens of infants, children and the immune suppressed, not thousands?

Actually, our industrialized food system has ALREADY failed, as evidenced by the epidemics of
obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, gastro-intestinal disorders, and arthritis left in its
wake. With David Kessler’s recent book: The End of Overeating, there is no longer doubt about the food industry’s manipulation which creates overconsumption. Kessler joins a long list of writers (Eric Schlosser, Michael Pollen, Marion Nestle, Jane Brody, Frances Moore Lappe, Hank Cardello, Doug Garr, Alice Waters, etc.) who have attempted to address the dangers of our current “to big to fail” system. Additionally, there are hundreds, if not thousands of research articles pointing to the disease causing footprint of our food.

Conveniently, after we’ve become sick from eating our overly refined, processed “food”, the boys at Big Pharma step in to sell us, with ever increasing TV and all media advertising, their nostrums, which don’t actually cure, but just decrease the pain and suffering caused by industrialized food.

Eating poorly is interwoven into the very fabric and core of current mainstream media, and life. From commercials for food which creates disease, aimed at every age group, to the food provided in our schools, and the lack of time to actually eat this food (ha! no time to eat even highly processed food), which serve as powerful models of eating which creates disease. And
there’s the Burger King Don’t Bother Me, I’m Eating Man (or sexy woman). Hell, didn’t we learn from the Marlborough Man???? Even “left wing” on-line media, such as Huffington Post has ads from McDonalds and Pizza Hut. Duh. Get on it folks, this is TRULY THE STORY about health care reform. Robert Kenner connected the dots for everyone to see.

The constant refrain repeated by each and every one of the food producers interviewed in Food Inc. was: “We are so very good at using/combining science, technology, and engineering [one even processor wistfully said he was truly an engineer] to create profits.”

I spent 25 years of my life working as a registered dietitian attempting to un-do the pain and trauma of over consumption of industrialized food. There was no support for my work from the health insurance industry which doesn’t honor (reimburse) the need for nutrition counseling (not even for diseases which can ONLY be resolved with such counseling, e.g. Celiac Sprue), nor from the government’s MediCare or MediCaid systems. I was not only providing PREVENTION of disease, my work was part and parcel of the TREATMENT of the disease. Physicians too are not supported to provide nutrition guidance; the reimbursement process doesn’t recognize “advice” (again this advice is treatment, not just prevention) as worthy of reimbursement.
In fact there is no societal/structural support for truly changing what people eat. Despite all of the calls to “eat more fruit and vegetables,” “eat less red meat and saturated fats,” “eat less trans fats,” “eat less sugar and salt,” “eat whole grains”; the individuals with diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, cancer, gastro-intestinal suffering, etc. are left to fend for themselves. As are the pre-morbid, pre-disease overweight/obese Americans who are walking timebombs. Presently the food which creates health is costly, less convenient, and difficult to find. (Try eating well when traveling!)

Until we give more than superficial lip service to change of diet, our food borne disease outbreaks and epidemics will only get worse. Food Inc. ended with a call to “buy organic, shop local produce, cook more,” as SOME solutions to this crisis of health. I say this will NOT solve the problem and does not go far enough. The poor, the most vulnerable CANNOT afford organic, local produce at present prices. Unless their needs are part and parcel of the solution, then “eating well” will continue to be the privilege of the wealthy.

I call for: Subsidies for ALL PRODUCE (fruit, vegetables) so that a mother doesn’t have to pay $2.50 for a pound of apples, and $2.00 for a bunch of broccoli. For years, my motto has been: “All produce, 50 cents a pound!” Take the present subsidies for corn and soy, and give them to the fruit and vegetable growers in the land. In addition to these fruit, vegetable subsidies, call for the restaurant/fast food industry to price their fruit and vegetable offerings BELOW the cost of their cheapest itemw.

I call for: An FDA mandate to all commercial bakeries and fast food restaurant bakery producers to substitute at least 40% whole wheat flour for refined, enriched white flour. In 1998 the FDA mandated that all refined, enriched white flour be fortifies with folic acid. This was to decrease the incidence of Spina Bifida (a neural tube defect), which in fact has decreased. The FDA is empowered to act for the benefit of the greatest number Americans. The addition of whole grain wheat to our present refined flours will help ameliorate heart disease and gastro-intestinal suffering.

I call for: Taxation of food which clearly promotes disease: trans fats, saturated fats, products which derive >50% of their calories from added sugars, and products made from 100% refined, enriched white flour.

I call for: Taxation of food producers and farming methods which contribute to water, soil and air pollution. Methane, the gas produced by our cows and cattle, contributes a full 18% to greenhouse gases. Stonyfield Farms in Vermont is showing the world how to decrease cow methane production, by (duh!) feeding cows what they were meant to eat: grass and clovers, NOT soy, corn, and animal by-products. The water pollution from chicken and hog factories is costing us our very lives, and there is not accountability by Tyson, Purdue, or Smithfield.

I call for: Health insurance (from private for-profit insurers, as well as government) reimbursement of Medical Nutrition Therapy (nutrition counseling as part and parcel of disease treatment and prevention).

Lastly, I call for a RE-STRUCTURING OF PROFIT. It is unconscionable that food industry corporations are allowed to continued to profit from feeding Americans disease causing food. Restructure the profit base to REWARD Health Production and Environmental Protection. The LESS obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, gastro-intestinal ills Americans have; and the LESS water, soil, air pollution we have, the more the corporations can make.
If the scientists and engineers can design DISEASE etiological food, they can begin to un-do this process by designing HEALTH etiological food.

When health promoting food is as ubiquitious, cheap, and convenient as the disease promoting food presently is, then we’ll begin to have real change. We need recognition that
Public Health, which can only be achieved by consumption of wholesome food, is part and parcel of Public Safety.