Green gifts for the holidays

I just purchased new TerraPasses to offset the carbon dioxide that Victor and I generate while driving our cars, and I noticed that they have a page listing a variety of options for purchasing offsets for your own carbon emissions... as well as for anyone on your gift list. Check it out here.

Unbelievably delusional...

Laughable... and scary. An excerpt from Karl Rove's November 21st appearance on the Charlie Rose Show.

29 years later

Twenty-nine years ago today, after serving less than one year on the San Francisco Board of Super- visors, Harvey Milk was assassinated at City Hall by Dan White, a fellow Supervisor. White also killed Mayor George Moscone.

Harvey Milk was one of the first openly gay people elected to public office in the U.S. While his political career was short, he made a profound impact on San Francisco, the state of California (chiefly by his leading the fight against the Briggs initiative, a state proposition that would have barred gay men and lesbians from serving as teachers), and, indeed, America as a whole.

Milk was assassinated only a few short years before AIDS would begin taking the lives of thousands of gay men in San Francisco. The response of many leaders of the gay community in the early days of the epidemic was to defend sexual freedom at all costs, a strategy that time would prove only hastened the spread of the disease at a time when it was unclear how it was transmitted. (Randy Shilts' And the Band Played On is an excellent book documenting all aspects of the early years of AIDS in America.)

I have often wondered about the paths down which Milk might have led the community had he lived... and how many lives might have been saved by his leadership.

We will never know.

To learn more about Milk's life and his legacy, read his wikipedia page or buy/rent the Oscar-winning documentary about his life, The Times of Harvey Milk.

The Mist/Shining

Yesterday I saw The Mist, the new movie based on Stephen King's novella. Definitely not for small kids; it always amazes me to see people bring them out for this kind of fare. I was sitting next to a ten or eleven year old boy, in fact; he seemed to enjoy most of the B-movie monster scenes but was left silent by the agonizing ending.

Then again, so was I, but if you've seen the movie you may understand why it could be particularly disturbing to a boy like him.

I've read or listened to the movie's reviews from NPR's "Fresh Air," the New York Times, and The New Yorker. The reviews are mixed, but what's clear to me is that this isn't one of those films that you simply watch in order to see a story unfold. What's most interesting about The Mist is revealed when you begin to contemplate what people are capable of when things become difficult... "when things stop working" as they say in the film. And more importantly: when you begin to ask yourself what you would do under the same circumstances.

Probing those questions brought to mind images of the Holocaust, of Jim Jones and the People's Temple, and the Heaven's Gate cult. The human potential for blindly following a charismatic leader is easily tapped, the capacity for doing evil nearly inexhaustible. Social norms can easily be broken when fear takes over.

Reflecting on all of this also led me to think about what may lie ahead if we are unsuccessful in addressing the challenges of global warming, running out of fossil fuels, and new pandemics as discussed in James Kunstler's The Long Emergency.

I was also reminded of another Stephen King movie, The Shining, and the interesting essay I had read in 1987 in the San Francisco Chronicle. Written by Bill Blakemore, it details his theory that Stanley Kubrick's film version of The Shining is actually a commentary on the genocide of the Native American. You can read it here. I watched the movie with my girlfriend of the time (yes, it was a long time ago :-) and found Blakemore's arguments compelling.

Season of giving... you get to decide what

Yes, another holiday season is upon us. And while I'm happy to report that once again I slept in on Black Friday, I did do some online Christmas shopping today.

I also received this from a very wise friend in San Francisco:

A Hundred Dollar Holiday: Give the Environment a Break,
This Year Don't Buy Things For Holiday Gifts
by Rabbi Michael Lerner (Editor, Tikkun)

Every year, Americans spend billions of dollars on holiday gifts that will quickly be discarded or put into a closet where it will be little used. Many will end up in a junk pile sometime in the next few years, further polluting our environment.

Meanwhile, the production of these goods will use up natural resources that could be used to help provide housing, furniture and clothing for the poor of the earth, or which could be preserved for future generations.

For years I've run "holiday stress" groups and heard first hand about the depression and despair thatafflicts tens of millions of Americans, either because they can't afford to purchase the goods that are advertised in the media and set a standard of consumption beyond their means, or because they purchase and deepen their personal debts, or because they don't receive the quality or quantity of gifts that they've come to believe reflects how much they are really loved. But there are better ways to show love besides giving things.

The shopping frenzy between Thanksgiving and Christmas effects everyone—I've seen it undermine Chanukah as well as Christmas, and afflict those whose only connection to the holidays is the purchasing of material things.

Ironically, buying things has never been part of the essence of this season.

The central message of both Chanukah and Christmas is the affirmation of hope for a renewal of goodness in the midst of a world that is increasingly dark and fearful. For the ancients, that was expressed through holidays of light—burning the yule log or lighting candles as a sign that even while the days had grown shorter and the sun seemed to be less available, we believed that it would return. Chanukah taught the world that a small group of people (the Maccabbees) could fight the overwhelming power of the Hellenistic empire, and triumph. Christmas brought the message that a little child, always a symbol of hope, could bring love and kindness to the world, with tidings of peace and generosity.

This year, we need to get back to those messages of hope. In a world in which our Senate has just signaled, through the confirmation of an attorney general who couldn't muster the courage to acknowledge that waterboarding is torture, that the Bush Administration need not respect international law, and in which our Congress keeps spending hundreds of billions of dollars to fund a war that the vast majority oppose, and in which our presidential candidates are unable to commit to bringing all the troops and advisors out of Iraq before 2013, there is a desparate need for ordinary citizens to experience hope for a world of peace, generosity, and ecological sanity.

Unfortunately, that spiritual message gets lost when our attention gets submerged in the frenetic buying that our consumer culture mandates.

Generosity and gift giving is a terrific thing. The Network of Spiritual Progressives has proposed that as a society we ought to try a strategy of generosity for ending terrorism and providing homeland security-- by launching a Global Marshall Plan. Let's dedicate 1-2% of the Gross Domestic Product of the U.S. each year for the next twenty to ending domestic and global poverty, homelessness, hunger, inadequate education, inadequate health care, and repairing the global physical environment. That will do far more to provide us with security than dumping trillions of dollars into militaristic adventures like the war in Iraq and the proposed assault on Iran that only further inflame hatred toward the U.S. and terrorism. We should be insisting that anyone who wants our political support endorse that kind of a plan for societal generosity.

And in our own lives, we could commit to spending not more than $100 on gifts for the children in our lives who may have been so overwhelmed by media expectations that we can't yet wean them from societal materialism. But for everyone else, give a gift of time. Send your entire guest list a copy of this article and then offer them four hours of your time—to provide childcare so they can go out for an afternoon or evening, to paint their apartment or house, to shovel their snow or help them with gardening, to teach them or their children some skill of yours, to do shopping or errands for them, to help them clean their garage or arrange their papers or books, and you can think of much more.

Time is more scarce and more precious than goods—so this is a gift that shows real generosity. And not using up more of the earth's resources is a gift to the earth's environment that will yield fruit in the years ahead.

Feel free to send this to everyone you know, post it on your website, and talk about it with people on your guest list way in advance of the holidays. If you happen to be in the Bay Area, you are invited to the Beyt Tikkun Chanukah candle lighting at the Noe Valley Ministry at 6:45p.m. on Friday night December 7th, followed by Shabbat services--1021 Sanchez Ave, San Francisco near 24th Street (and give yourself 20 minutes at least to try to find parking). And/or come to the TIKKUN/NSP Holiday Party on Saturday night, December 8th in S.F. (details will be under "Current Thinking at www.tikkun.org the week before) with Christian, Muslim, and Jewish celebrations merged but not to lowest common denominator!!!

Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun and chair ofthe Network of Spiritual Progressives (www.spiritualprogressives.org) and author of The Left Hand of God (HarperCollins 2007). He is rabbi of Beyt Tikkun Synagogue in San Francisco. RabbiLerner@Tikkun.org

“The light of a single candle can dispel the darknessof a thousand years.”

Over there

Last week I watched the final episode of Ken Burns' documentary, The War. If you haven't seen it, you can rent it on DVD from Netflix, etc. Very interesting as it attempts to tell the story of WWII from the perspective of the men and women on the ground... and at home.

I also just read William Langewiesche's essay on the new U.S. embassy in Baghdad:

What on earth is going on? We have built a fortified America in the middle of a hostile city, peopled it with a thousand officials from every agency of government, and provided them with a budget to hire thousands of contractors to take up the slack. Half of this collective is involved in self-defense. The other half is so isolated from Iraq that, when it is not dispensing funds into the Iraqi ether, it is engaged in nothing more productive than sustaining itself. The isolation is necessary for safety, but again, the process paradox is at play—and not just in Iraq. Faced with the failure of an obsolete idea—the necessity of traditional embassies and all the elaboration they entail—we have not stood back to remember their purpose, but have plunged ahead with closely focused concentration to build them bigger and stronger. One day soon they may reach a state of perfection: impregnable and pointless.

AIDS/LifeCycle recap

And yes, this is months overdue. But in a nutshell: the AIDS/LifeCycle from San Francisco to Los Angeles was amazing. It was probably the most physically challenging thing I've ever taken on, largely due to the fact that I pushed myself to cover the actual 545 miles of the ride as fast as I could so that I could maximize the amount of time when I a) wasn't sitting on that frighteningly painful bicycle seat and b) was socializing at the oh-so-fun rest stops.

I met great people. I enjoyed laughs and tears with old and new friends. I raised over $7000 (and with the other 2800 riders, a total of $11 million!). I swore the first four days that I'd never do it again... then donned a red dress as is traditional on day five and suddenly every mile seemed a lot easier. Stopping for margaritas just a few miles short of the finish line was incredible... the delicious knowledge that we had MADE IT!

Here are a few pics... and if you've never done something like the LifeCycle, do it. I was humbled by so many of my fellow cyclists: men and women 20 years older than me, 100 lbs or more heavier, HIV+, etc. It is truly amazing what people are capable of when they believe in something.

Obama!

Okay, I am going to sneakily avoid explaining why I have been silent for so long... and fail to mention that I have relocated to Las Vegas, Nevada (where the lifestyle is surprisingly much quieter than in San Francisco)... and neglect to mention that I am in love and happy happy happy with a wonderful man named Victor...

In order to highlight the fact that I am endorsing Barack Obama for President! (Yes, I know the whole world has been waiting on my choice... :-)

I had been holding out for Al Gore to announce that he was running (and a Gore/Obama ticket would have been dreamy) but that's not going to happen. And after watching the October 30 Democratic debate I decided that Obama is my man. This essay from Andrew Sullivan cemented it:

Obama’s candidacy in this sense is a potentially transformational one. Unlike any of the other candidates, he could take America—finally—past the debilitating, self-perpetuating family quarrel of the Baby Boom generation that has long engulfed all of us. So much has happened in America in the past seven years, let alone the past 40, that we can be forgiven for focusing on the present and the immediate future. But it is only when you take several large steps back into the long past that the full logic of an Obama presidency stares directly—and uncomfortably—at you.

So I've sent my first contribution, volunteered to work with the campaign here in Clark County, and am getting ready for the second-in-the-nation Nevada caucus on January 19.

I told a few friends, and one of them questioned Obama's stand on LGBT issues. And as if on clockwork I got an email from the Obama campaign with a link to a recent statement he had made affirming his strong support for equal rights for the gays and lesbians. I found this video as well:

YESTERDAY I SAW the new Robert Redford movie, Lions for Lambs. I highly recommend seeing it... and even more highly, getting involved!

"There are people, all over the world, every day, who are fighting to make things better."

-- Robert Redford's character, Dr. Stephen Malley

P.S. It's nice to be back. :-)