That Got Me Thinking

Claudia Romo Edelman has spent the last 20 years successfully working on humanitarian concerns, advocating for human rights and advancing equality globally. She is a Mexican-Swiss diplomat, a special advisor to the United Nations and the founder of the We Are All Human Foundation, as well as the co-host of its podcast, Global GoalsCast.

As of late, she has rebranded herself and her mission. Her new position is what I’d call, Humanitarian Chief Marketing Officer; and she has set about spreading the truths governing  migration and rebranding the image of Hispanics and Latinos in America.

Edelman likes to deal in facts; and the fact is, salsa is outselling ketchup, tortillas are the new white bread and brown is soon to be the new white. She is intent on waking the sleeping giant that is soon to be the new middle class.

Some starter facts: A person who doesn’t live in their home country of origin for more than a year is a migrant. There are approximately 255 million migrants around the world. Migrants, 5% of the population world wide, generate more than 9% of the GDP globally – that’s more than seven trillion dollars yearly! Migrants spend 85% of that income in-house and send 15%  back to their home countries, producing a  600 billion dollar windfall – a huge contributor to global foreign aid.

With extensive experience as a marketer for social causes, packaging and promoting challenging and complicated products like poverty, hunger, aids as super attractive issues, she has set her sights on repackaging and promoting  the reality of the incredible Hispanic community and its major acquisition power, currently not accurately represented in media and government.

Edelman is a  mindshifter, shifting mindsets from perception to reality and forecasting the future, “The issue of equity, inclusion and diversity is going to be essential to America in these next years.” She is creating content and changing the narrative one story at a time. She believes humanity is a muscle – it can be exercised and trained – the world just needs to get pumping.

http://weareallhuman.org/

https://globalgoalscast.org/

https://www.claudiaromoedelman.com/

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“As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote, I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.” These are the words of Herman Melville, and the mindset of teacher, sailor, attorney and historian, Maxwell Taylor Kennedy. In his latest work, Sea Change: A Man, A Boat, A Journey Home, Kennedy shares his harrowing adventures  and uplifting journey of setting sail on the Valkyrien schooner to find home.

Max Kennedy was taught early on that there is no better way to prepare for emergencies than to sail head-on into as many storms as possible. His mother was ardent, “No matter how windy or stormy the weather, she taught us always to sail.” Sailing could be frightening, but it was a fear with certainty -spawning feelings of being connected, alive, and alert.

The Valkyrien schooner was a noble yet broken boat, heroic yet struggling, and maybe so was Max. “For me, the truly brave thing is not holding the wheel of a schooner as she breaks up in a storm, but committing to the intimacy of marriage and being present in the lives of my children.” So he set sail to face the pirates, broken rigging, anchors, masts and death defying storms.

Max found that stepping out of one’s comfort zone is the difficult thing. He came to understand that the search is enough, and the only way to get there is to commit to the search and commit to being yourself. He discovered certainty in connection and how it allows us to be open and really live. He realized that knowing there is someone out there who cares about us is the certainty we all need to go forward valiantly.  And that we truly start to live when we open to that connection – Land ho!

As for the bananas… Everyone in New England knows it’s a terrible thing to do and one of the worst things you could ever do to a boat. “It’s bad luck and it really screws things up!”

https://www.islandportpress.com/sea-change.html

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If you have ever looked at the actions of the religious right and been stymied by the contradictions, or been brave enough and humble enough to look back at your own life and question those moments you acted in righteousness rather than with integrity, Costly Grace: An Evangelical Minister’s Rediscovery of Faith, Hope, and Love will provide you with the clarity you seek.

Rob Schenck converted from Judaism to born again Christianity as a teenager. He’d found home, purpose and community. He’d found his path to satisfying his spiritual hunger, became a minister and set about saving lost souls. Decades later he’d look back at his life and realize he’d strayed from his deepest convictions. This epiphany necessitated him leaving a position in an organization he had spent 30 years building and a universe of 250,000 supporters, an influential position in the nation’s capitol and access to those in highest office.

His personal path had paralleled that of the evangelical church. He’d gone from a humble reverend, dismissed by the power elite, to a position of power, political recognition and influence – a place that is difficult to retreat from once it’s reached. It would take a family crisis and a questioning of his espoused faith to bring him back in alignment with his core values, religious beliefs and true faith.

In his earnest attempt to do God’s work, he’d become extreme, making choices and taking actions that would later prove more difficult to justify.  In hindsight, it was painfully clear, he’d been sacrificing God’s teachings to get the work done.

Costly Grace brings a  message of challenge and change to Schenck’s evangelical community and an attempt at clarification and understanding to those outside.

http://tdbi.org/

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Hateful behavior has become an acceptable norm in our lives.  Sally Kohn, a liberal commentator who worked at Fox News, set out to understand how we got here, and what we can do to change. She tells us in her new book, The Opposite of Hate: A Field Guide to Repairing Humanity, “We allow our condemnation of hate to be shaped by who exactly is doing the hating, and that includes giving our own hate a pass.” “Most of us think there is a problem with hate, but we don’t think it’s our problem, one that we are participating in or contributing to…We have a massive problem that no one thinks they are responsible for.”

Through her research, Kohn determined that most people don’t see themselves as hateful even while participating in the most extreme hateful behavior, including genocide. She explores the genesis of hate, its contradictions and complexities. And then she shares the glimmers of hope she’s found for humanity. The Opposite of Hate guides us through what we can do to recognize our own hateful biases, and what we can do to react differently in the face of what appears to be hateful behavior aimed right at us.

http://www.sallykohn.com/

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Kevin Hall is a two time cancer survivor, an Olympic and America’s Cup sailor. He’s got an amazing marriage, three children and an Ivy League degree. And he has suffered from the “Truman Show” delusion, a form of psychosis. for the majority of his life. When he is under the command of the Director, Kevin follows directives and has ended up in danger, in jail and committed to the hospital.

Are we romanticizing mental illness? Is it the price one pays to be brilliant? Does our culture have such a twisted relationship with achievement, fame, failure and shame that the sheer force of society’s demands can lead a highly tuned individual to crack under the pressure, just like the hull of an America’s Cup boat. Is mental illness less acceptable for premiere athletes than artists and scientists? Has a culture focused on social media, fifteen minutes of fame, reality tv and escapism fostered the development of such real life delusions?

Mary Pilon, the New York Times bestselling author of the Monopolists, in her new book, “The Kevin Show: An Olympic Athlete’s Battle with Mental Illness” tells the incredible story of Kevin Hall and the psychiatric disorder that leads him to believes he stars in the television show of his life.

http://marypilon.com/

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What if you didn’t have to prove it? What if you just knew that you were… enough?

We live in a culture where no matter how many achievements you accrue, you never feel you are enough. That goal post just continues to move a little further, and then a little further, yet. And for the women and girls of the post feminism generation the additional pressures are even more extreme. They were told  they can do anything and end up feeling they must do everything.. And, they need to do it well, while looking good, being nice, and sending some well timed “thank you” notes would also be appreciated (and maybe even expected.)

Add to these incredible expectations the pressures of social media, goals for effortless perfection and the need to achieve for oneself, your family and the prior generations that gave you these opportunities and something is likely to snap.

Rachel Simmons is the New York Times bestselling author of Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls and The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence. She believed it wasn’t enough for us to open the doors for girls that we also needed to give them the confidence to walk through them. Now she knows we’ve raised a generation of girls who feel no matter how hard they try, they will never be smart enough, successful enough, pretty enough, thin enough, well liked enough, witty enough online or sexy enough. And she’s had enough! Her answer is her latest book, Enough As She Is: How to Help Girls Move Beyond Impossible Standard of Success to Live Healthy, Happy and Fulfilling Lives.

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Few of us realize just how much our diurnal patterns affect everything in our lives. But, luckily for us, Dr. Suhas does. Dr. Suhas Kshirsagar, is the author of The Hot Belly Diet, and Change Your Schedule, Change Your Life: How to Harness the Power of Clock Genes to Lose Weight, Optimize Your Workout, and Finally Get a Good Night’s Sleep.

Skipping meals, random workouts, working late and viewing screens into the night, messes with your sleep cycles and every other aspect of your rhythmic functioning down to the genetic level. Our “clock genes” control every aspect of our existence, and the growing body of research on chronobiology reveals just how sensitive we are, including a single cell microbe, to the affects of being out of rhythm.

Dr. Suhas gives us the tools to transform your life for good with three simple steps:

http://drsuhas.com/change-your-schedule-change-your-life/

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The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of Angels in America, an oral history, illuminates and re-qualifies the question, “Who do we want to be as a people?”

Tony Kushner, and all the participants of the many and varied productions of Angels in America, asked the same question 25 year ago. Daringly, asking the question with a strong, effeminate, black, gay man as the protagonist of their Pulitzer Prize, Tony winning play. They made an argument for hope as a political necessity in the worst years of the AIDs crisis. The writers, casts and crews rose up, as did their audiences, to bring the rest of the world along with them. Kushner (like Shakespeare) and his compatriots took on “The painful but joyous work of trying to do better.” Incorporating all the visions of race, class, sex and religion they could muster, they advanced the world through opposition.

Isaac Butler and Dan Kois listened carefully to the play and all of its creators to discover its story and how it wanted to be told. Then they asked a question, “Are we doing what the play and life demand of us, and are things working out?”

We are Living in a new era of the resurgent right, issues and questions  remain regarding the human condition. Change is at the center of what it means to be alive, and each of us on this earth is asked what we will do with that required change. When we resist progress, shouting, “Stop!” – People are destroyed inside and out, people are oppressed,  and people die unnecessarily, as they did in the AIDs crisis.

Butler and Kois (like Kusher) pose important questions of our models of masculinity and participation – those we are being torn apart by and those we have embraced. Kushner is adamant about the source of toughness; he shows it through the fabulous effeminacy of a hard edged queen. Fabulousness, whatever it may be,  was and is the source of strength for the gay community and maybe for us all.

“Change is coming, the question is what are you going to do with it?”

The World is spinning forward…

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/the-world-only-spins-forward-9781635571769/

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Dr. Samuel Harrington tells us, “In old age, Comfort Care is more important than prolonging life with excessive technology.” Not because we can’t prolong it, and not because it’s expensive, but because it’s unpleasant for everyone involved.

The goal for the majority of elderly people is to die a peaceful death at home. But because the over medicalization of our healthcare industry is out of control, with the majority of healthcare costs being exacted in the last six months of an individual’s life, that goal is subverted. The focus is set on extending life rather than relieving suffering.

Medicine has changed from a healing art to a commercial enterprise. Dr. Harrington’s personal experience of seeing his parents age, and the challenges and decisions they had to make in the face of the medical juggernaut of technology, motivated him to write a book to guide readers toward maintaining control over their deaths. In his book, At Peace: Choosing a Good Death After a Long Life, Harrington provides strategies for managing our deaths as we have managed our lives, so as not to lose control of our passing.

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Scott Freeman is a professor of biology at the University of Washington and the author of Saving Tarboo Creek: One Family’s Quest to Heal the Land. It’s the story of what they did, why they did it and how they saved Tarboo creek. Their work sweat and tears brought a damaged peace of land back to life – a quest to heal more than the land and one Freeman embarked upon with his wife, the book’s illustrator Susan Leopold Freeman

Saving Tarboo Creek is  a call to help us find our way. In 2100 the human population will likely pass 11 billion and half the species alive today will be extinct. Or may be, if we don’t act. The challenges of this century are a product of the past century’s successes and it will take another great generation to save the planet.

Let’s start with the steps for restoring a Salmon stream:

Next, a move to the a natural life. What does that entail? Belonging and being part of a community and participate in it – finding purpose and meaning- all to prevent  mass extinction and widespread human suffering… the greatest generation of all has its goal…

The simple list: Limit family size, favor locally grown food, prefer smaller and more efficient homes, transfer the time and money spent on driving to more enjoyable activities, contribute to the preservation of wild places through taxes and private donations, and consider and evaluate your values – do you value materialism over depth of relationship?

https://www.scottfreemanauthor.com/

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