Bamboo--the versatile, sustainable, eco-wonder

In Dance Rose and other villagers roll out a bamboo dance floor for a night of dancing under the stars.

Used worldwide for food, medicine, clothing, furniture, housing, bicycles, weapons, boats, packaging, kitchen and household utensils, bamboo is the eco-wonder of the world.

Stronger than hardwood, and touted as the fastest growing plant on the planet (some species grow 1-3 feet a day), bamboo is a highly renewable resource. Resilient and persistent, bamboo is reported to have survived the bombing of Hirsohima, according to the Florida Caribbean Chapter of the American Bamboo Society.

But that's not all. Bamboo consumes carbon dioxide and soil toxins and returns 30 percent more oxygen to the atmosphere than trees. Because of its rapid growth and root structure, it can stabilize soil destroyed by overgrazing and over-building.

And if all that weren't enough, bamboo is just plain beautiful.

Native to all continents except Europe and Antarctica, bamboo grows in climates both tropical and frigid. There are estimated to be more than 1200 species worldwide, with about 450 of them in the Americas, according to Gilberto Cortes, Regional Director of Bamboo in the Americas. Only one species, Arundinaria gigantea, commonly known as Cane Brake or Cane Reed, is native to the United States.

Using bamboo does not mean we are off the hook environmentally. Bamboo is the major food for endangered pandas, bamboo lemurs, and mountain gorillas, whose habitat shrinks daily.

Civilization increasingly encroaches on bamboo forests and plantations. Make sure the bamboo products you purchase are from sustainable plantations that do not destroy habitat or endanger other species.

For more information on bamboo, its uses, and the people and creatures who depend on it, visit these sites:

• International Network for Bamboo and Rattan, for bamboo as housing construction material and as a way out of poverty, especially for women


• Bamboo Web


• World Bamboo Organization


• American Bamboo Society, lots of info on non-native plants, where to find them, and how to grow them
  
• 1000 Things Made of Bamboo, a sometimes repetitive list, has lots of images
• Wayne's Word, comprehensive scientific data presented in a lively format including good images and fun bamboo trivia
  
• WSU Extension Bamboo Research, studies bamboo as food crop (bamboo shoots) and as construction material crop (bamboo poles)


• Wikipedia on Bamboo, for general info, good images, and more links


• Environmental Bamboo Foundation, for environmental data as well as some cool graphics showing how to build a bamboo house and a bamboo shelter (it appears they have them backwards, however, with the house on the shelter link and the shelter on the house link); site includes a pharmacopoeia of ways some cultures use bamboo as medicine

Music and Books

Sometimes a villager in Ordinary mentions a book or song title that exists in our world. In those cases, I link to a commercial web site, such as Amazon.com, where you can learn more about the book or song.

I prefer Amazon because I'm a tad lazy, and they make it easy to find book excerpts and audible song samples.

Below is a list of titles that have appeared in Ordinary posts, as well as on this blog.

The list is divided in two sections: Books and Music. It includes the original post in which the title appeared, and a link to the commercial web site where you can find information and, frequently, excerpts and samples.

Enjoy!

Books

• Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh, by Helena Norberg-Hodge; appeared in Learning from Ladakh, 6/17/05, Ordinary Peace, 1/23/06, Chi choen?--What's the point?, 2/5/05



• Sent by Earth: A message from the Grandmother Spirit after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, by Alice Walker; appeared in Welcome the Children, 8/6/06



• Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World, by Alan Weisman; appeared in Gaviotas--A Real Village, 9/11/05



• Start Where You Are, by Pema Chadron; appeared in Why Do We Kill People?, 1/18/06, Ordinary Peace, 1/23/06, The Slave Trade--alive and flourishing, 2/9/06



• The Mistress of Spices, by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni; appeared in Nest on 7/26/05



• Medicine Cards by Jamie Sams and David Carson; referenced in Bonnie on 8/18/05



• Silk Roads and Shadows by Susan Schwartz; appeared in Amends on 1/21/06



• The Mind of the Dolphin: A Non-Human Intelligence, by John C. Lilly; appeared in Something Wrong with this Picture on 9/9/05



• Communication Between Man andDolphin: The Possibilities of Talking With Other Species, by John C. Lilly; appeared in Something Wrong with this Picture on 9/9/05



• Toward a Psychology of Being by Abraham Maslow; appeared in Chi choen?--What's the point?, 2/25/05



• Freakonomics: A rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, Welcome the Children, 8/6/06

Music

Note: To find the audible song samples, scroll down the page. It may be necessary to expand the track selections as the web site does not display them all at first.

• The Garden Song, (audio sample on Disc 2, Track 8); appeared in Weed
  on 6/21/05


• The Erie Canal, (audio sample available); appeared in Rain on 7/17/05


• You Never Can Tell, (audio sample on Track 9); appeared in Dance 9/15/06


• Do Ya, by K.T. Oslin (audio sample on Track 5); appeared in Dance 9/15/06

This post will be updated as new books and song titles are added.

Tap, tap, tap

So I keep working with this concept of replacing the need for vengeance with love. Guess what! It's working!

The more I let go of my fear and loathing and respond to Brenda (not her real name, but time I gave her one) with loving kindness, the more frequently I succeed. Lately, I care less about her behavior toward me, and a whole lot more about my behavior toward her.

Lately, I see her more as a human being who is trying as best she can to be the best person she can.

Trust me: it's not easy. Baby steps are giant leaps compared to my micro-steps, but you can measure the distance all the same.

One big help the past couple of weeks is Life Coach Wanda Tucker's First Aid for Trauma technique.

This is something I need privacy for--I can't stop wherever I am and do it on the spot--so I have to take a few minutes to get away, but it works!

When I am hurt or betrayed and the tooth-grinding, eye-squinting, stomach-churning anger rises, I step behind closed doors and tap.

Try it! Let me know how it works for you next time you feel hurt or betrayed or just plain out of sorts.

Welcome the children

In an Ordinary world, people rarely do violence to one another, emotional or physical. The strife revealed in Love as Retribution and Wounded Dog are unheard.

Is this possible in our world today? Consider:

• In the world of Ordinary, people of child-bearing age take care to conceive only when they are certain of their desire and ability to nurture their child with tenderness and love. Every birth is cause for high celebration. Every child is cherished.



• Ordinary children are nurtured not only by their parents, but by all the villagers, each of whom feels responsibile for the well-being of the children.

  Because they were raised, themselves, in loving homes and a supportive community, the adults have full capacity to provide appropriate care. No child need fear the misguided—or worse—adult. There are no "funny" uncles or aunties in Ordinary.



• Children and adults in Ordinary are encouraged to explore their individual creativity, to develop their highest talents, and to share their creative work with the world. Work is play.



• Children are taught responsibility from an early age, and even the smallest children share age– and skill–appropriate chores. This sense of responsibility carries through a lifetime.

  While each Ordinary inhabitant contributes her or his best skills and knowledge—people who love to cook work more in the kitchens and bakeries; people who love to teach or build or garden work more often in classrooms, construction, or the fields—everyone rotates through chores in all other disciplines.

  This ensures respect for all the labor required to maintain the village and meet the needs of its people and their animal companions.

The children, receiving carefully considered attention, instruction, and ample love, learn early to respond to others with compassion and love. Cooperation, respect, and understanding are as natural a part of their lives as air and breath.

In her book Sent by Earth: A message from the Grandmother Spirit after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Alice Walker tells of the Dagara people of Burkina Faso:

The most important thing that happens in a person 's life is that they be welcomed when they are born. If they are not welcomed, all their lives they experience a feeling of not quite having arrived. There is anxiety. There is unease.

Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, in their book Freakonomics: A rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything, suggest provocatively that legalized abortion so cut the incidence of unwanted children as to instigate an unexpected and dramatic drop in crime of all types throughout the nation, stunning researchers and government planners alike.

They attribute this dramatic drop twenty years after the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision to the single fact that women ill-prepared to support a child emotionally, physically, and financially now had a choice. Fewer unwanted children were born. The cycles of poverty, drug and alcohol addiction, and crime were interrupted.

While there is much to be said on both sides of the issue of abortion, one thing is certain: In societies around the world, where children are loved and desired from conception, nurtured by their communities, and offered ample opportunity to explore their talents, crime and strife are nearly non-existent.

Could it be possible that bringing only wanted children into the world, welcoming them joyously, and consciously meeting their needs day to day could change the world and bring about world peace at last?

What do you think?

Wounded dog

So I have been working on this concept of love as retribution. I'm not doing as well as I would like.

Days I must see the woman who seems to enjoy hurting me, I visualize greeting her with a smile and kindly thoughts. The smile does not come easily.

My pulse quickens. My palms sweat. I feel anxious. A little trill of fear runs down my spine. What has she planned for today? Spitefulness rises like a snake, and I feel false, forcing a smile I do not feel.

The minute-by-minute effort to replace anger and pain with compassion is exhausting. I resent the need to spend my energy this way.

What foolishness! She wastes so much of her own energy, and what can it possibly gain her? What reward does she find watching me struggle with my personal ethics--watching that first hit of pain, followed by teeth clenching, eyes blazing (I am prone to a bit of Irish temper), then the effort to seek peace in my soul and bring it to my face, my body, perhaps to bridge the space between us. Does this give her such pleasure? She smiles, a funny, twisted, small smile, and turns away.

Love can heal. I have seen it many times. I have seen it with this woman. Simply returning her hatred with unspoken love, a prayer for peace, a vision of her as a child beloved of Spirit, has brought a generous smile from her face, warm and true. And momentary.

In my resentment, now, I want to hang onto my "righteous" anger. Anger protects me, keeps the wounds fresh, reminds me not to trust again, not to extend myself only to be rewarded with betrayal or worse.

Still.

I quiet myself.

Breathe.

I acknowledge the ragged breath, the unhappy thoughts. Let them go.

Ask for guidance.

Several days this week, in that still space, Wanda Tucker's advice came to mind (see her comment to Love as Retribution) that wounded individuals who attack repeatedly are like a dog hit by a car. You've seen it, too. In his agony, the dog strikes at every helping hand, lashing about, running blindly into objects, hurting himself the more.

The image of the terrorized dog arrests me. I don't understand how a rational, well-educated person can enjoy hurting others (I am not her only target), but I can understand the impulse of a crazed, injured animal.

In that moment, a tiny bit of healing takes place. I release a breath I had not realized I was holding. I take another breath, and another, deeper and deeper. I move a little closer toward compassion and love.

I'll keep you posted on the progress of this experiment in creating peace from strife. I invite you to share your stories. If one person can make peace with one person, there is hope for peace in the world.

Namaste.