The Influencer

“How did we get all these Chinese people?” I asked my farm partner, Clasina, when I landed in Northern Thailand a few days before our scheduled ten-day building workshop on our farm, Lost Boots. So named because Clasina lost a boot in the mud while attempting to install a pipe on the pond's bank. The locals called it the farm next to the crematorium. The Thais feared ghosts, so they were likely happy to have us own the property that hosted the crematorium. During the first build, we ran a homemade extension cord through the forest to one of the bathrooms at the crematorium so we could have power. Now we had solar power so we didn’t need to.

“Yidan,” Clasina said in answer to my question about the 9 workshop participants from China, “the Chinese influencer who did the video tour of Maggi’s house.” Maggi was our workshop teacher, a 77-year-old English woman with considerable natural building experience who had created a zero-carbon footprint home for herself. This house was the crowning achievement of her building career incorporating a self-regulating interior temperature, a rain catchment system, skylights made of car windshields, and a pair of revolving air vents that topped the two domes of her roof giving it a circus tent appearance. The house was in Chiang Dao, a resort area in the mountains 90 minutes from Lost Boots. 

Maggi operated a B&B in another part of Chiang Dao with a spectacular mountain view. Guests stayed in the many roundhouses she built on land she purchased. She sold the enterprise before building her final home on land she leases from a Thai friend Noot, who came to help us build. We also welcomed back our lesbian couple, Gege and Aleks. They, too, had found us last year through Yidan’s videos.

I wondered if, Yidan, did videos like the Asian woman who built a tea house from scratch and then served tea to her mother. It was so charming a concept and so captivating to watch her build with just hand tools that it went viral. (Later I found out her videos were supported by an entire crew of professionals.)

Clasina rented some serious tent pop-ups for the lecture and presentation that Maggi, an innovator of tropical natural building techniques, would present. In addition, we had Grant a gay man from New Zealand who met Clasina at a permaculture conference. Permaculture was a philosophy that encompassed sustainable agriculture focused on food forests. His last professional role was as the headmaster and director of an international school in Thailand. Upon their arrival, he gave our camper guests a tour and orientation of the onsite details, which included protocols for the use of the bucket flush toilets, bucket showers, individual solar lanterns, and tent set-up. 

Clasina’s husband Panya and our hired cook, Oy, were our onsite camp and kitchen support. A familiar helper came for the day to help with meals and clean-up as well as building. Drinking and cooking water, in reusable heavy-duty plastic bottles, was delivered by the case. Water for the bucket baths pumped up from where it sits, in the canal around the original rice field. Pumped with solar power to the gravity feed tank placed on the hill above the newly built shower stalls. The water was filtered before entering the tank and warmed by the sun.

At our introductory presentation, we asked the participants to tell us of their building experience. There was the usual range from none at all to having already built various tiny houses and cob houses. They expressed a desire for simplicity, for community with like-minded permaculture practitioners, and a recognition that the rapid urbanization of Asia was not for them. Some brought friends with them who wanted to do something different away from being online. 

One woman, living in Shanghai, came to get away from the stress of urban living. I later learned that she had a start-up business in public health and wanted to build a health and wellness center using natural building techniques. Her enterprise catered to companies who wanted to relieve the stress and unhappiness of their employees. This was an idea she adopted from a Mayo Clinic’s model. The Chinese government, who were now concerned with the stress level and unhappiness of their urban workers, were giving out grants to any enterprise that aimed to alleviate this stress and she had gotten enough money to hire 30 employees. Her phone cover was embossed with the message in Chinese and English “The Cause of Communism Needs Me”. That did give me pause. Was this more user-friendly communism doing better than any of our top-heavy non-profit organizations to alleviate social problems?

Another city dweller, one of the young men, tutored English as a second language mostly to students wishing to enter universities overseas, but not to the States, but to the UK. He served as an interpreter for his friend who had little English and also offered his talents to others in the group. It was a beautiful thing to watch this cooperation. It made me feel like I was in a Chinese movie but without subtitles.

Last year we held our build for women only so a man (whose Chinese name was Fafa so we didn’t know if man or woman) had to be turned away and wait a year. Now he was here going by the name Leo. Many of the Chinese participants had adopted Western names to better navigate this Englishness of the West. The English tutor had taken the name Ethan (in admiration of Ethan Hawk an actor) and dyed his hair blond. They were thirty-something, and so eager to help when asked to unload cases of water. As befitting Asian culture I felt their deference to their elders and to group harmony except when it came to food which they helped themselves to with little awareness of how much there was and if everyone would get a share Clasina complained to me. She soon corrected them on that matter.

On the second day, we were joined by Andrea, a German friend of Maggi’s, who had just bought land in the area and would be embarking on her own building journey.  

After the breakfast presentation, we proceeded to give our first hands-on learning task which was a demonstration of roof thatching which we did on the bamboo structure of the loo. Since I had done this task before I spent the time talking to the Chinese influencer on the surrounding grassy ground. She was in her early thirties as were most of our participants. 

She had arrived, at breakfast, in her white pick-up truck with the name of her farm on the side door with a painting of a bear figure on a scooter. I immediately noted the dog and cat riding with her. She was wearing white pants with cowboy-height brown boots and a brown flight jacket over a white camisole. I loved that she was so styling. She had come to document the build for her channel, carrying a tiny drone camera illegal in the States for privacy reasons. She also used a full-size single-lens reflex camera much like I had once carried. The dog was with her, now, quietly sitting in her lap. 

Yidan was from a rural village in China I would learn. Her mother had been a traveling seamstress who tailored clothes for the villagers before off-the-rack clothing became available much as was the case in Thailand when I was a child. She, and her generation, had witnessed all the changes to China, in a couple of decades, that I witnessed over the last 50 years among the Southeast Asian Tiger nations.

I asked her why she had left China. She told me that Chinese men preferred their women to be no taller than 165 centimeters while she was 173 centimeters so her chances of finding a mate in China were diminished. I remembered I had met a Japanese woman with the same dilemma. Most Chinese were not eager to embrace an off-grid lifestyle, I gathered when she told me that the participants that had come to join us were rare in the population. Just like my Western friends who could not live without a flush toilet, I thought.

Her English was perfect and I quickly realized her understanding of the world, in terms of globalization trends inspiring an off-grid approach to her lifestyle, very much paralleled mine. She was doing with her video blogging, what I was doing with my writing, telling stories of inspiration from her DIY projects on her own homestead in Thailand while, at the same time, acting as an inter-cultural translator to her Chinese audience.

I was wearing my handmade Roman sandals hoping to spark conversation around them. Before I left home I had re-soled them with nails to avoid using toxic glues. I explained this to Yidan and how I kept replacing the soles and the uppers because the leather insole had taken on the shape of my feet and felt so good to wear. She totally understood how leather can do that. Grant, spotting the turquoise laces in my sandals, began to riff with Yidan about how I could market my re-solable shoes at a bespoke price while offering different colored inserts and shoelaces as an ongoing income. I laughed at this business-centered feature of my money-savvy Asian compatriots. 

Yidan, was herself, a sharp entrepreneur and had asked for her cut for every participant she brought to our workshop. We charged them a fee of 750 Euros for the privilege of learning from us as we used their labor to help us build. I could see we were being offered the opportunity to collaborate with Yidan and I listened eagerly as she told us how Chinese parents were willing to pay handsomely for their children to get off their screens, and travel to another country to play in the mud and experience nature. I had been discussing this same problem of children and screens with mothers in my women’s group back home. How fun it would be to be the provider of a nature school experience.

Yidan was able to tell me in fifteen minutes all I wanted to know about China. What did their government tell them about the United States I asked. Oh the US is evil, she said. Same with ours I replied; it made me uncomfortable how much Americans were suspicious of China. As we wound down our conversation we were joined by, Andrea, our German expat whose English was halting but serviceable. The three of us spoke of the increasing polarization in each of our countries between Left and Right and Yidon quietly spoke the ethos of all of us as she suggested that the real work to heal our global alienation was to make bridges between groups. Hear, hear my next-generation mirror image. 

Over the ten days the more I learned and observed about our Chinese team the more they reminded me of Americans. No longer were they the ugly Chinese, of the previous generation of tourists, who had descended on Thailand in tour groups to stay in the large hotels that were built on the outskirts of Chiangmai occupying the town as if it was their own Disneyland. An American friend had told me she was physically pushed off a path by a woman from such a tour. 

No, these thirty-something Chinese were quieter and savvier. They liked American movies and music. They wore our brands, Columbia jackets, hoodies, sweat pants with stripes up the leg, t-shirts with English words on them, and a Chinese typeface that looked like English words. Gege had the exact same pair of black Hoka's as I was wearing. “We’re twinsies, “ I said pushing up against her shoe with mine. Her girlfriend Aleks came forward to translate. “She got those shoes because of you,” she said loud enough for all to hear gesturing towards me. Awww. They were probably made in China anyway. We had even both bought them second-hand from equivalent online platforms. This internet generation put China on the rise. They reminded me of Americans in the ’90s when we were still free to speak and share ideas and fashion, before cultural appropriation and the compelled speech of diversity, equity, and inclusion silenced and divided us. The ’90s was the golden age of my American Life.

The women were also competitive in a friendly way inviting others to show their skills and being willing to laugh at themselves if they weren’t up to it. I, too, was inspired to show off my skills whether it was with kung fu moves stretching in the morning or with dance moves around the campfire in the evenings.

One morning I came to sit by the rocket stove, next to Leo who was talking to Grant about his favorite music. “Tell Amanda what your favorite song is,” Grant said to Leo. “Imagine,” he said. “John Lennon”, Grant said.“John Lennon’s Imagine?” I repeated dumbstruck. This was just so poignant given the jostling of our respective world power nations, it made me want to cry as I recalled the lyrics. 

Imagine all the people sharing all the world. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. 

Now when I hear China mentioned in the news I will picture Leo learning English from an app that showed the lyrics of songs in both Chinese and English as he had shown me. Indeed all these young people I met would flesh out my thoughts of China.

Four of the Chinese girls had already left China and were living in Thailand, one working for a Thai radio station, and one for an American NGO for the environment. We met a couple of their husbands. One couple lived on a sailboat off the coast of Krabi, one of Thailand’s islands. They might be rare birds among the Chinese population, but that population was just one generation from all the practical survival skills of rural living.

Our American kids were no longer competitive with the world I thought. They needed to get off the grid, get grounded, and dispense with these narcissistic messages of identity, brain diagnosis, and food allergies. It was getting harder to work with Americans on our teams. I wasn’t ready to run away yet. I knew I would go back home to California and try to talk sense into our runaway progressivism which was running us aground with bad ideas that didn’t work. What else could I do?

Thailand: My Covid Report

After two years of being confined to the United States, I was relieved to finally be able to return to my home country of Thailand for a different perspective. I had been relying on this outside perspective to keep me sane during the Trump years, but once Covid hit I was stuck here with the fear. Luckily I had just returned from Thailand just before lockdown, in February of 2020, where I had already experienced life under Covid and found things to be orderly and well run with no panic buying and an acceptance of precautions as the natural course of things. After all, they had been through SARS and Bird Flu. The government had turned all decisions over to the Ministry of Health so there was a minimum of politicizing. Thailand followed what its neighboring countries were doing while working with other doctors internationally towards finding effective treatments. 

I was curious to know how my family and many friends in Thailand had experienced the pandemic. I asked everyone about their Covid-19 experience, if they were vaccinated and how they had treated their Covid case once they got it, as most everyone of my two dozen contacts had gotten it. The variety of answers I received made Thailand and its expat community look like the Cantina in Star Wars, so filled with all manner of perspectives and a variety of sources of information all mingling together in peace as befitting a cross-roads community of planetary relationships. These photos from the airport in Bangkok also tell a story. One that indicated a shift away from Western medicine. 

Gift Packs of Thai Herbal Medicines

Thailand had reported the first case of Covid outside of China; yet its death rate is one seventh that of the U.S. It is now 29th in numbers of deaths per capita in the world, with the U.S. being number one. Thailand had several lockdown protocols and a 14 day quarantine period for entry into the country and even between regions. Quarantine was reduced to three days, then lifted entirely by November of 2021 with proof of vaccination or a negative Covid test within 72 hours of arrival.

Although slow to roll out the vaccine, Thailand now has 76.5% of the population fully vaccinated and vaccination or a Covid test is required for entry. (I showed my vaccine passport at SFO before boarding my flight.) There were four vaccines offered—two Chinese ones, a British-Swedish one and Pfizer. 

Five of my contacts had refused the vaccine, firmly believing that it had potential to do harm because the technology was so new, and so few clinical trials had been done. They were smart people who had developed health regimes as part of their lifestyle. One elder expat, who found Al Jezeerra to be the best source of news, found an older flu vaccine to take that was seen to have worked with Covid. She had a mild case, once infected, and was soon over it.

Another unvaccinated, who already had an autoimmune disease, had the worse case of all my friends as it impacted her intestinal system. She followed the protocol developed by a doctor in India and took a course of Ivermectin to reduce inflammation. She recovered in due time. My cousin and her two sons, were all not vaccinated. They got a mild case of Covid and she presumably used her skills in energy medicine to treat it. Her boys tested negative in 3 days. Another friend not vaccinated got it and was over it with no special treatment in a week or so.

None who refused the vaccine were closeted about their status as this was not considered a heretical stance to take, nor were they accused of betraying the common good. The vaccine did not, after all, prevent transmission, so logically made no difference to the common good. Nor did not being vaccinated result in more people being hospitalized because doctors in Thailand urged early treatment before the body could escalate to the crisis stage requiring ventilators et al. This was also the case in many other non-first world countries.

Doctors treating Covid around the world were sharing information uploaded to an international site. They were using every medicine available to them. Ivermectin being the cheapest and most available followed by hydroxychloraquine sulfate, both used to fight malaria in hot countries. These medicines were so widely used in Africa that it was thought to be the reason why deaths were so low there. I had already perused such a site and my friends in Thailand also knew about this sharing of information. While in the U.S. it was adamantly claimed that there were no treatments available until the new Remdesivir drug came out.

Fah-Talai-Jone

An expat friend from England treated herself and her husband with the ancient Thai herbal remedy Fah-talai-jone when they got Covid. 

This herbal medicine is listed with the Ministry of Health as an official treatment for Covid 19 in Thailand. It is a very old traditional herbal medicine. "It cures anything," said my friend.

A Thai friend posted on FB that she was in quarantine because her partner had it and she was boosting her immune system with the Chinese herb Ganmoeling which she instructed me could be found in San Francisco’s Chinatown on Clement or Irving street. She posted her negative tests every few days. Few of my friends in California spoke of boosting their immune system. Few talked at all about methods to keep in good health. I was beginning to suspect that the entire American population had immune systems that sucked and said as much to an elder friend who had closely followed the CDC recommendations. He did not believe that vitamins were a proven health strategy and seemed to have few remedies for the common cold. He suffered badly from any flu that came around and would urge me to get a flu shot whenever one hit. I was not in the habit of getting flu shots at all and rarely got sick.

I did visit one expat couple in Thailand who had not had Covid. They were isolated in their condo outside of Bangkok at a beach town. Both had taken the vaccine. My friend of the couple, an American and her Canadian husband, both felt the vaccine was the way to go, much like my mates at home. My friend did concede that she took Quinine as an immune booster which I hadn't heard of anyone doing, but later found that it was recommended by doctors internationally as an effective immune booster against Covid as was vitamin C, D and other supplements.

The vaccine was offered to those who wanted it. Those of my Thai friends who were largely Western educated had readily accepted the vaccine as did their staff. Except for my cousin of the energy medicine training in Reiki. She felt that those who did take the vaccine were doing so out of fear, rather than seeking natural body affirming, healthy living strategies. Her brother had taken the vaccine, but upon relating his sister's experience seemed both impressed and mystified by her success with her energy medicine methods. Nor did he feel he had to state why he had taken the vaccine. 

There were no vaccine mandates. Thais believe that masks more prevent transmission. Those in my household wore masks when they approached me indoors and in the car with me. Masks were still mandated inside public buildings and recommended on public transport. They were surprised that I had not yet caught Covid and considered this status rare.

At the airport while waiting to fly to Taipei, I saw two duty free stores I had not seen before, both selling herbal remedies of all kinds, mostly made in Thailand. Gift packs even. Thailand has seen a renaissance in its herbal medicine practice, having shaken off being enamored of Western medicine and its pills. Such American drugs were offered for sale in Thailand below what we would pay for them in the US. I found this out when my mother went to buy her blood pressure medicine at the local pharmacy during one trip.

Positioned between two world powers, Thailand already has its own Chinese community concentrated in Bangkok. Enough to make bridging with China a natural fit. While the enticements of the West are already firmly established in multiple food franchises and shopping enticements. The technology of both were readily available.

My contacts in Thailand often ask me to bring them certain supplements and vitamins. My energy medicine cousin liked products offered by an American doctor practicing oxygen medicine. On this trip, due to a mistaken double order, I was carrying over $800 worth of two products, one to detox the body and one to energize it with amino acids, though I did not realize it until I saw a bill in the packing slip. 

I, too, have my health regimes and returned unscathed by the virus.

Normally I Woudn't Be Here

In which I question call out culture, extremist activism, LGBTQ splintering and perspectives in an opinion centered culture vs a non-confrontational collectivist one.

I would normally right now be overseas in Thailand enjoying being pampered by my cook and traveling to my farm with Clasina. Or alternately traveling to my other home of origin the UK. My devising to be overseas every six months began in earnest during the Trump era. This has proven to be an excellent strategy for saving my mental health. 

Thai culture being a collectivist culture doesn't burden the individual with the need to move daily through a barrage of opinions. I once joked to a Thai friend that for every American who believes they can change the world this instant by delivering an opinion there needs to be at least a hundred Thais in agreement just to begin a discussion on a topic. This expressed equally our frustration with both Thai and American culture.

While in Thailand any actual requirement of me to express myself is so reduced that my stress level comes down to a soothing slowness that gives me a sense of timelessness and spaciousness. It also gave me the clarity of mind to look back at American culture through Facebook and sharply see the biases at play there. 

When people ask me how I stay so thin I tell them it is because my brain uses up so much fuel just trying to deconstruct my life given all I have to process making sense of it as an American of multiple perspectives.

Lockdown Retreat

Luckily I had the best of all possible lockdowns mostly alone which gave me a lot of space in isolation in my tiny house with lots to do putting in a garden and adding new dimensions to my off grid life. I kept expecting long tracts of boredom which never appeared. I was kept so busy reading the news. And I had two classes to attend on Zoom for which I installed a hanging chair. One class is called The Fool’s Journey, a year long exploration into the Western mystery school tradition using the Tarot deck designed by my teacher Pamela Eakins. I spent a lot of my shamanic journeys for the class hugging my two spirit guides and holding hands with them to fill the void left by all the social distancing. This  felt so real to me I could feel my heart opening to receive their love.

The second class was also taught by Pamela and that was a women’s writing class. We had been meeting for several years at her comfortable home on the coast and now on Zoom in the strange prison of our individual cells we spent that first meeting voicing our fears and wondering if anything we had been writing had any relevancy at all. Pamela with her usual stroke of inspiration had us sit down and write whatever we had to say about the pandemic. The pieces were so full of energy she decided we were to do a book and invited more women writers on her list to contribute. The poems and essays came in so fast that Pamela was soon able to produce our finished book. Called  Pandemic Carona: Poems of Shock, Fear, Realization and Metamorphis by the Sisters of the Holy Pen which you can now order on Amazon.

This project saved our sanity and gave us purpose. And most important it kept us writing and I was able to regain my sense of relevance. The book itself is a diverse collection of voices some intentionally ordinary and full of love, some brilliant at times profound. It is a capture of the arc of this pandemic and its impact on us collectively. We did a book reading this week on zoom for 29 of the writers hosted by Bookwoman an independent bookstore in Austin Texas attended by some 70 people. The reading a performance that was part ceremonial, part intimate revelation. It was recorded so you can soon enjoy it at your leisure. 

Nevertheless as we approached June I had been alone so long I started to feel the edges of the abyss, the sense that if I didn’t work at holding it altogether I would unravel into some sort of crazy fractured despair. I was no longer as captivated by the discoveries of the evolving virus and the shenanigans of the current administration threatening to collapse our country. I kept in mind an astrological interpretation of 2020 which described a year of turmoil as long held assumptions and structures were challenged, but clarity would come sometime in December it promised. As I wondered how this turmoil would manifest George Floyd was killed and society broke open with rallies led by Black Lives Matter. 

I breathed a sigh of relief. If this was the turmoil we needed to process (yet again) we could do this. Race was something every American had to address in some fashion and had a handle on though likely not the same handle, but at least a perspective from which to begin. In short order just about all the books on the New York Times bestseller list was about race. I was touched by the interest my white women colleagues showed in rolling up their sleeves to get a grip on white fragility and structural racism so that a solution might be found and applied. I also came to understand through Black activist contacts that white women were far from considered trustworthy (largely because of their role in lynching history and now as Karens) and had to work super hard to offset this distrust. I came to the conclusion that only with a Black woman in leadership would we regain any sort of feminist credibility. (Go Kamala Harris.)

I listened to podcast discussions of American History including the 1619 project and a much more comprehensive series of podcasts called “Seeing White” and “The Land That Never Has Been Yet”. This last title a quote from Langston Hughes. 

Seeing American history through the eyes of slavery and the cruel brand of capitalism that evolved from it along with the associated societal disdain for the poor was a perspective that actually made me feel better about the current administration. When Trump was first elected I felt that the GOP had pulled off a coup which was an alarming concept even for a Thai. But from this historical perspective I saw that the U.S. had all along contained this element of bias for wealthy white men and Darwinistic cruelty for those who couldn’t cut it in this supposed land of opportunity. This made me feel that the core of this country was still stable in nature; it had just been backsliding rather terrifyingly.

It allowed me to see that those who managed to succeed at all in such a country were heroic. This was a helpful concept. It reminded me of the Buddhist teaching that all life is suffering. So we were doing well if we managed not to suffer. 

Out Onto The Streets

I attended the Black Lives Matter rally in Redwood City which happened early on while we were still in quarantine and was well attended. I was pleased to see the large presence of white people and subsequent rallies through the largely white towns of Woodside, Half Moon Bay, Palo Alto and Menlo Park. In Menlo Park I attended the LGBTQ+Black Lives Matter rally held on the anniversary of Stonewall. I pulled out my vintage “Queer N’Asian” t-shirt and made myself a little Black Lives Matter sign. The t-shirt gave me claim to being a part of queer history. I hadn’t felt such a sense of belonging in a long time especially as a woman of color and now as an elder asking the young women if I could photograph them.

Having given my time to Black Lives Matter I reserved a little space to present my own cause by presenting myself as a butch lesbian in a post on Facebook. Most Americans don’t read me as butch because I am Asian and have kept my hair long. And Asian women are so highly fetishized as sexual creatures that they are seen as a dish for men (and thus assumed to be straight and femme). So in order to counter act these assumptions I posted a picture of myself wearing my Fruit of the Loom tighty whities. This classic garment being the only male garment not appropriated by women so could still truly be said to be cross dressing. I paired it with a wife beater tank top and photographed myself from overhead while lounging on my bed in classic pseudo pin-up fashion. It got my point across. See it here. 

I wouldn’t have to do this in Thailand where I am read as a Tom the slang term for masculine presenting women. Tom is short for tomboy and also means lesbian. I was assured of this presentation by my housekeeper when I mentioned to her that I was going to lunch with my Tom friend. 

“Are you a Tom too,” she asked.

 “A little bit,” I said. 

“More than a little bit,” she responded. I smiled broadly pleased at this reading. That was another perk ofbeing in Thailand. I am seen for who I am. And the visibility of other butch lesbians in Bangkok is prevalent. 

I was making myself visible to my Western audience in order to maintain this aspect of lesbian culture especially in these times of makeover by the transgender movement. 

Thai people already understand what a transgender person is. There is the term katoey used to identify those (mostly men) who are cross dressing and presenting as women. They do not hold the same status as women, but they have a place in society that goes back through history. Most Asian societies have this category in their lexicon. Similar to Native American society under the name Two Spirit.

It was because of the term katoey that I knew I would have a place in Thai society. The explanation for this transgender presentation is explained as most things in Thailand are by the concept of karma and reincarnation. I was told that I still carried the spirit of a boy implying that I had been a man in my last life. The idea that transgender people are persons who are trapped in the wrong body would seem beside the point to a Thai. The whole point of incarnating is to work through your stuff where you now find yourself which is as a man or a woman. Though Thailand being the sex change capital of the world is eager to accommodate those who wish sex reassignment surgery. Because if you can have it why not? The Thais are as much about acquisition as any consumer society.

Given this reincarnation karma story you would likely call this a religious ideology and I’m fine with that. But by the same token I can also claim that the idea of a person being trapped in the wrong body is an ideology. One that is being enabled by the “new” science of gender. Such science has proven that those who are transgender have the brain of the sex they identify with. Society needs science to prove such things because of the logic of American civil rights. For in order to legislate protection for those who face prejudice from others who would enact violence or bias against us it is best that such characteristics be determined to be immutable. 

In other words it’s not a choice or a psychological aberration. Because after all we are a self flagellating moral society and if it were a choice or a psychological aberration we would be obliged to fix it to conform to societal mores. And if science says you were born in the wrong body then by all means let us alleviate the stress of this suffering preferably wth medical intervention as we do every other condition in this over-medicalized society so we can make some money off it and contribute to the GNP.

The ideology of karma makes for better stories about past lives which includes historical circumstances and some artistic nuances in the telling. A psychic is the professional you would call to help you see into this past. But mostly we just shrug and leave it to the mystery of not knowing. Remember mystery? That element of awe and how to live with what you cannot know with a hope for the poetic justice of karma in the end.

Cancel Me This

An opinion in Thailand does not require a response. To object to it would be to seek conflict which would cause suffering and that would just not be a good practice of Buddhism—to intentionally cause more suffering. But here in the West we have elevated an opinion to such a point that people are publicly reviled, lose their jobs and their reputations while attempts are made to prevent them from speaking further. 

I read a few analysis to understand this phenomena. Call-out culture I learned was largely due to Twitter empowering those who usually don’t have a podium. From the perspective of the status quo it was mob rule. And this technology had empowered young people, African Americans and Trans Activists one article stated. I remember being young and gay recklessly making declarations and refusing to trust anyone over 30. The second category wasn’t surprising given the history of this country. But this final category; how did this tiny .01% minority become so virulent?

The best way to explain this last category is through the shallow lens of American pop culture. You will no doubt remember that five years ago Bruce Jenner became Caitlin Jenner in a manner so public it put the whole trans story into the public eye and explained the idea of a man trapped in a women’s body. And because Jenner had access to not only the finest plastic surgery that money can buy but the glamour arm of Hollywood the results were absolutely spectacular. Americans love a story of transformation and glamour and ate it up. The story might have ended there, but for the political aspects of the trans movement and the ongoing violence enacted on transgender people. This violence targeted at any gender nonconforming, cross dressing individual, but because of the popularity of the transgender story it became mainly about transgender individuals. And how to protect those individuals.

Both the United States and the UK took steps to protect transgender people basically by inserting the word gender into all the discrimination clauses where the word sex had originally been inserted to legislate equality between the sexes i.e. men and women. This change had an impact on the protected class of women. But before we could even get a grip on what this might mean cancel culture determined that anything that was not pro trans was bad whether it had an impact on natal born women or not. And that’s how J.K. Rowling became the poster child of transphobia. And by trouncing the writer of this most popular children’s book series of all times every liberal straight person could now virtue signal their support for the T in the LGBTQ alphabet without even fully understanding what any of it meant. And trans activist could use the headlines trouncing the author for being a transphobe to further present all the pro trans ideology as established fact (to fill the vacuum of this absence of understanding). 

When I read these articles I was struck by the calm matter of fact language used to establish an authority that was not to be denied with links thrown in liberally to “prove” that these facts were not to be contested. And when I followed the links  I found more of the same style of language interpreting science based research that basically came down to opinions rooted in an authority that was backed up by nothing more than the lived experience of a trans woman. 

This illusion of authority was so complete that it took me a few minutes to realize that we were allowing a person who transitioned as an adult and had no actual lived experience as a girl to comment on both the lives of young girls and how their social lives operated. And that I in fact had more authority having come out much earlier than my peers in the context of an all girls school. A school that came to be known in the psychiatric community as the hotbed of eating disorders and other self harming practices due largely to the incredibly high expectations placed on girls being groomed to leadership as stated by the school mantra or at the very least the trophy wives of the rich given the demographic.

It is in the arena of high school that trans ideology is having its biggest impact and had come to the attention of research scientists given that the number of teenage girls seeking sex reassignment surgery had shot up by 4,400%. Seventy times what it had been before which was so negligible that it couldn’t even really be counted. Before 2016 the number of gender dysphoric kids had been predominantly pre-school age boys. 

The moment the first research study was published it was debunked and cancel cultured into disgrace by trans activists. But the researcher prevailed, apologized for any offense taken and successfully republished the paper with just a few clarifications on methodology. But further research has been stymied and gone underground. Nobody wants death threats just for doing their job. But a brave journalist did publish a book on the phenomena of this trans contagion among girls which I have duly read and reviewed here. It’s a compelling read of sociological significance.

Meanwhile almost no girls seemed to be identifying as lesbians anymore. Lots of lesbians in my age group wanted to be boys as children including me (and we are all glad we remained women). So what was going on during an era that is supposedly so gay positive. Or was it?

Gay Liberation No More

When I came into the movement post Stonewall it was determined that to be accepted by the public we needed to present ourselves as ordinary people. Ordinary in the sense of being just like anybody else, wanting to live quietly with our chosen partners, get married and have a family. This line of thinking required the right optics i.e. that we also look and act like straight people and basically keep our fabulousness off the streets and safely cordoned off to the night club act and movies as entertainment for y’all. In the process of this assimilationist strategy we threw all the gender non-conforming and poly pansexuals and what all under the bus. And that naked man with the boa constrictor who appeared in all the San Francisco Pride parades at the time.

Liberals embraced gay marriage as their virtue signaling token issue and haters targeted gay youth and gender non-conforming individuals. To assuage this wrong and the accompanying guilt of the assimilationist strategy the movement now feels that the time has come for the T in LGBTQ to be the focus of the times. And that California schools are to be apprised of all the various flavors of our rainbow down to our many sexual preferences and gender non-confirming presentations including the whole brain in wrong body thing to prevent further bullying of our people. As a result or maybe as a clever workaround to the ordinary vanilla male and female stereotypes being described in the process the number of those identifying as non-binary entering college has shot up along with the incidences of transitioning. While the number of out gay youth seem to be disappearing per the observations of my peers. Homophobia was clearly still at large.

Last year to get a feel for this transgender era I took myself to the Trans March the weekend of Pride. I immediately noticed all the Toms—the Asian girls presenting as butch, arm in arm with their femme counterparts. And I was delighted to see Latina Toms too. I also photographed the proud shirtless transman showing off his bare flat chests for us. There were what I used to think of as drag queens—gay men with more style than could be contained in one gender to paraphrase a drag queen movie of the ‘90s. One in a wonder woman outfit. And lots with a more vintage slightly dowdy style I used to recognize as transvestites—straight men who like to dress as women (and were observed by gender scientists to be sexually aroused by this, but this autogynephelia is now considered a transphobic concept). There were also young children identifying as trans accompanied by their entire family. And a dour androgynous woman holding a flag I didn’t recognize striped in olive white and violet. It was the “gender queer” flag I was told upon inquiry with some annoyance. My favorite flag was a transgender flag with the words Trans Queer Witches Against Fascism scribed across it with a drawn glyph of pagan and gender symbols. Standing next to the flag was what I used to recognize as a lesbian with the fade haircut now popular with butch lesbians. On their shirt a button proclaiming the pronoun “he”. My photographs organized for you here. 

The takeaway of my foray into this brave new queer world was that it was so splintered into factions that nobody would look anyone in the eye let alone smile. So much depended now on defending one’s identity. Because apparently it wouldn’t be apparent otherwise. The chalked messages on the sidewalk gave me a clue of the underlying pain. “I Am Trans Enough” and “Let People Be Themselves”. I realized that this movement both included me as an Asian Tom and rejected me as an American lesbian. It also empowered me to defend myself.

The very definition of lesbian being oriented around being a woman and being attracted to women seems to defy the very existence of trans women whose vocal activists have mounted such an aggressive public attack on women who don’t want to sleep with persons who have penises that they sound exactly like men who tell lesbians they haven’t met the right man yet. (Not all trans people have genital surgery so they are stuck with the equipment they were born with as it shrinks or enlarges in response to the hormones they are taking.) No comparable attack seems to be aimed at straight women. Maybe their appetite for penises is too intimidating. heh. Plenty divorced their husbands who wanted them to be lesbians to support their late blooming transgender lives.

Meanwhile online lesbian-only space has been completely excommunicated from social media platforms. Even the ever tolerant kink community can no longer allow their members to express their particular preferences if it involves only natal born women. I have though found an online group that regularly shows me photos of cross dressing lesbians hosted by a clothing company offering clothes for women affecting masculine style. This fashion group called Butch Fashion, Style & Care was the perfect cover for natal born women only. Fashion serving as a cover for a persecuted minority. I was able to post my lesbian stories and photos there and occasionally others would discuss the pros and cons of taking T (male hormones) or the best brand of binders to compress their chests into a male appearance. All closely moderated to stop any fights.

The trans identity has benefited the community greatly to be sure; it created a political category for gender non-conforming people and thanks to recent Supreme Court ruling this category is now to be protected from job discrimination. This was huge in my mind because it finally allowed all cross dressing persons to have a place in American society. 

I do not however think it a good thing that people are being punished and prevented from simply stating a preference for natal born women. Being able to state our sexual preferences was the main point of the gay movement. Not to allow this is homophobic. But now the bigger activist epithet is that I am being transphobic. Well have at it then. I’ve devoted my entire life to being free to express myself without fear of reprisal either from losing my job or by besmirching my reputation only now to have my voice canceled by my own tribe. 

A society that cancels what people can say so punishingly is practicing a self imposed totalitarianism. It is a mob rule that is stoked for revolution, but has no skill set for the long slow work of diplomacy and coalition building. It is adolescent and punch drunk from unaccustomed power. Reminding me of revolutions that having thrown over a society devolve into corrupt governments with little vision.

I have a long memory going back to a time that strived for freedom of expression and a live and let live openness to differences. One that allowed a certain curiosity to ask questions and a diplomacy in answering those questions. My values didn’t change; the world around me changed and my language dates me. I now regard anyone under 35 with suspicion. I feel like an old crank spouting insults.

American culture as many have pointed out denigrates and mothballs their elders. Another perk of going to Thailand was that my status as an elder gave me a reverence that was palpable in the sky train station as I pulled out my senior card. It made me feel seen and respected.

Now I am trapped here in this ridiculously shallow, polarized society that has so politicized everything that even wearing a mask in a health crisis is a political statement. But with little to lose I realized that I could afford to speak for the unfavorable positions as I saw them.

I have long been of crone age, but maybe curmudgeon would be a better fit. heh.

Is This The Apocalypse I’ve Been Waiting For?

I am used to writing from my own bubble attempting to entertain with my slightly absurd minimalist approach to life, but it’s hard to write anything now without a coronavirus context. We are all in this together and I am even more aware of how my writings might fit into the temperature of the times. I want to tell you about the organic farming workshop I went to in Thailand, but I’m compelled to insert my report between stories of the coronavirus like the sandwich of the day. But maybe my off continent, off kilter perspective has something useful to offer. Or at least entertain. I hope you are all well and coping optimally.

Is This The Apocalypse I’ve Been Waiting For?

We’ve never experienced anything quite like this in the U.S. So you too might have asked yourself some of the questions that crossed my mind as we went into this pandemic. Ok maybe not in such depth. You have probably not waited quite so eagerly as I have for the collapse of American civilization. (My obsession due largely to my disgust at our consumer excess and as a psychological gambit that allowed me to maintain my sanity while living in such a complex society.) As a long time collapsnik I’ve been reading and entertaining myself with various scenarios of societal and systems collapse. 

My tiny house design incorporating much of what I learned. Electric grid gone down? Solar on board with battery bank. Earthquake ready? Of course I’m a Californian. Contamination of our water supply—field grade Berkey water filter already long in use. Interruption of water supply? 330 gallon water catchment system installed. Air quality at unhealthy 2.5 PPM due to fires? Got my RZ N99 reusable mask in fetching fashion print. (All sold out now.) Economic collapse? Expenses minimized and rent reduced to $500 and a work/trade agreement. Also debt free. Very important. Go bag? Stocked. Nuclear attack? Saw the movie. Not worth prepping for. Unless to take the cyanide route. Pandemic? Hmmm. Too big to scale. Definitely not my apocalypse.

I sat back and watched feeling I had little to offer other than a sense of expectation born of all my study. But then came the Toilet Paper Apocalypse. No toilet paper to be had in seven counties. All hoarded away by the early rush. I did not care about toilet paper any more than my countrymen in Thailand who were not hoarding anything least of all toilet paper. So why this sudden need to stash away a year’s worth of this mundane commodity? 

Psychologists speculated. Toilet paper is a low risk buy when people want a sense of control. You know you’ll always need it so why not have more on hand? It’s less of an investment than 50 cans of tuna fish that you might end up throwing out. Then others see the empty shelves and jump in too thinking if everyone’s doing it it must be the right thing to do. Add to this a sense of consumer competition to spur on the hunt. Also the packages are big and give a sense of having come away with a big haul. Yes makes sense. But the explanation I liked best was offered by a shamanic counselor who explained that the instinctive center is located at the base of the spine very near the anus. When people are frightened their instinctive center opens up. And having to poop when you’re out and having to look for a bathroom causes anxiety. But once a bathroom is found that anxiety is relieved and prompts a victorious sense of accomplishment. Everything is under control and all potential mess properly wiped away. Toilet paper thus became the iconic purchase of uncertain times—the means by which people could gain control of the situation.

I started to tease people online about their tree consuming ways. Long time readers of my essays may remember that I had learned to dispense with toilet paper for pee by employing a squeezable plastic water bottle with a sport top to squirt water at my nether regions and drip drying afterwards. Any drips absorbed by my thick cotton underwear. I did not mind admitting this personal habit even though I did not seem to persuade anyone else to follow suit.

As the Toilet Paper Apocalypse continued with more and more posts on the topic I became bolder and offered my experience with the ubiquitous bum gun installed all over Thailand and fitted next to the toilet. Basically a hand held trigger nozzle connected to the toilet water supply faucet and used to wash your bum. Called a shower bidet if you were to order one. The Thai ones look like the trigger spray attachment on a sink. 

A colleague posted a picture of a makeshift one made from a garden hose trigger nozzle as a joke. When another colleague commented that such a device would be a disaster spraying pathogens everywhere I pulled up a link to a traveler’s guide on how to finesse  the use of a bum gun while in Thailand. Toilet paper in Thailand was largely used for drying off. The real action lay in actually washing with water. The Thais do not feel clean unless they can use water. Why push poop around with paper like polish on a piece of furniture. I mean really? Such an unhygienic habit.

Paper had only become a commodity under the influence of Westerners and global trade. In a land of hardwood teak and mahogany paper had long been a precious commodity. As a child I would see paper bags made from the pages of Western magazines. And it is still wise when going out, especially outside of Bangkok, to carry toilet paper with you or buy it from a vendor. From my readings on the history of toilets I had learned that toilet paper was not a commodity used by most of the world and felt justified.  

“Two thirds of the world don’t use toilet paper you tree consuming Western colonial imperialists,” I admonished in a comment. My educated friends thought this accusation of imperialism by toilet paper was hilarious. Nobody would take me seriously because American fecophobia was such an assumed premise thought to be shared the world over. 

“Don’t Americans know how to wash their bums?” I asked. Still no answer. Look I’m really not a backward third world person I wanted to say. I’m British and if you were confronted with mid-century British toilet paper as a child you would have a highly perverted view of toilet paper too I countered. As late as the ‘70s the British stocked their public toilets with single sheets of slick glassine paper that worked only to provide a barrier from moisture, was full of sharp edges and scraped away poo like a spatula. 

In a week Americans began to consider toilet paper alternatives. The bidet toilet add-on was selling out fast on Amazon and a former Peace Corps volunteer friend offered his experience being taught to use water in Africa by a fellow American accustomed to America’s cultural disgust to help them get over the hump of washing poop from their bums with bare hands. My friend showed a bottle top device that would convert a plastic water bottle into a squeezable bidet. This too had to be mail ordered. “A bowl of water will do,” I commented remembering the ornately worked silver bowls sitting next to the large earthenware pots of water in the bathrooms of my childhood.

In 2001 when I learned about our sewer system in my construction technology class I was horrified that a first world system would actually allow poop to overflow their massive tanks given a good rainstorm. These liberated turds would then sail away into the bay. Why did anyone think it was a good idea to use good drinking water to give a turd a ride to a centralized plant anyway? Humanure was an organic and useful material in its proper context. With a centralized water treatment system chemicals have to be used to render the water safe for flushing out to the nearest water source. Such a river or lake was the same water source that would be siphoned up again for human use. And the sludge at the bottom of the tank that remained to be disposed of was toxic waste not because of the poop, but because it was now all mixed up wth industrial waste full of heavy metals and chemicals that companies are allowed to send down the same sewer system.

I was sure there would come a time when such a system would be severely compromised while environmentally such a centralized non-organic method was just wrong. So I devoted my life to the pursuit of a home with a composting toilet. My fascination blossoming at a recent workshop on effective microorganisms which included alternative technologies for poop disposal.

Effective Microorganisms

For my trip to Thailand in February my farm partner Clasina suggested we go to an organic farming workshop on effective microorganism technology. I was excited to attend this workshop because converting my composting toilet to an EM set-up had been a game changer for me. I also wanted to share my personal experience of the method and offered to give a powerpoint presentation to this august body.

Upon arrival at the International Kyusei Nature Farming Center in Saraburi just an hour and a half from Bangkok we were duly impressed by this university level facility with its modern buildings and extensive campus. Clasina was particularly impressed by the sparkling clean bathrooms. The program was created in collaboration with the Japanese EM industry (so they would not be teaching us how to make EM ourselves, just how to use it as much as possible so they could sell product). Indeed the Japanese EM technology was being quietly introduced to all of Asia through such outreach while being offered to the public through spas, hotels and wellness centers with EM fertilized organic food, lush gardens and EM disinfectants and cleaners. It was through such a wellness center in Hawaii that a friend had heard about it. The same friend who insisted that I trade out my traditional composting toilet method for this superior (and faster) EM technology. Instead of waiting a year to season a humanure composting pile, the EM process only took 2 to 3 weeks to reach a pathogen free state.

EM was a disinfectant we learned. It was spritzed into the air daily to fell harmful bacteria. It was made into non-toxic household cleaners and hand sanitizers. From the first day we were given our choice to use EM hand sanitizer or the usual alcohol based ones to fend off the virus.

The center was part of the Asia Pacific Natural Agricultural Network and our workshop was attended by a huge group from Malaysia, but also Myanmar and Japan along with one other woman from South Africa and me the lone representative of the U.S. Lectures were given in English with detailed powerpoint presentations in the air conditioned fully technical lecture hall. In the afternoons we boarded a people carrier much like a an amusement park train to tour the working farm. Students showed us how mushrooms were cultivated and served vegetable roll snacks. We saw how biochar was infused with EM to make a more potent fertilizer. We toured the lush fields of vegetables and the chicken and pig houses. I was bowled over by the use of EM technology in animal husbandry. There was no odor at all not even in the pig pens. 

EM was also added to the animal feed as a probiotic supplement. The EM infused feed kept them healthier and they grew bigger than with conventional methods. Every time their pens were sluiced down the pigs came running to slurp up the EM infused waster. Their waste was washed away into large concrete pits where the mixture became fertilizer (just as my own poop did inside my three gallon bucket). What a game changer alternative. Imagine such a solution putting an end to those problematic lagoons of manure that stink for miles and sometimes blow up like a geyser or overflow into waterways choking fish with algae blooms. EM worked in the same way I understood my composting toilet to work. The effective microorganisms ate all the harmful bacteria and were then eaten themselves in a probiotic fermenting process that ate up all the pathogens. This process was given the Japanese word bokashi. “Bokashi!” we shouted in every group photo.

We also saw how food scraps were treated with EM in 50 gallon drums from which the liquid was collected for use as a plant feed. This you can do at home too in smaller buckets. Hands-on demonstrations had us shoveling and mixing together ingredients so the EM infused bran could ferment the compost. The following day we returned to find that the piles were so hot they would turn our hands red and I wondered aloud if I could heat my tiny house with such piles or at least heat water. For fisheries EM could be made into softball size balls and thrown into the ponds to keep them clean. We had great fun seeing how far we could throw when we were all offered a turn. The EM balls reduced sludge at the bottom and had other applications including the clean up of latrines. In shrimp farming the shrimp poop is food for the microorganisms so EM made the water clear and cut down the stench. The meat of cows raised with EM technology was lower in fat and higher in vitamins.

We concluded our workshop with a visit to a recycling plant in Bangkok. Here the use of EM cut down on the biggest neighborhood complaint—the smell. Plus they were able to make toilet cleaner and dishwashing products from fermented rice water and other captured waste products. No harsh chemicals were used at all in this recycling and green waste processing. EM technology had also been introduced to the Thai military and was adopted as a method for large scale clean-ups. In the city it was offered as a drain cleaner in one of my friends apartment building. All of these projects had support from the Thai government which gave grants for outreach into the community to teach people how to make organic fertilizer from their kitchen waste. And because the late King Bhumipol had long been an advocate of a self sufficient economy and had been voicing his concerns about global warming since 1989, the reduction of carbon in the air through the use of EM technology and the concept of zero waste was considered a project of the King. This had enormous appeal for the Thais giving them not only a shared mission, but a way to further implement the King’s legacy for the good of the country.

In the evenings of our 4 day workshop participants representing EM companies made their presentations touting the benefits of their product while farmers showed their agricultural projects. I gave my tiny house presentation on the second night. I had rehearsed all my jokes and had enough pictures to show the whole tiny house trend to an audience unfamiliar with this American phenomena and its California origin. They loved it. Having sufficiently explained why such a house needed to process their own waste, they had no questions about my EM methods so I was clearly doing it right. But the look of incredulity on the face of a Japanese woman who represented a health supplement company told me how out there I was. None of these professional EM distributors had thought of such an application. They did not know about the pet waste disposal system I was able to purchase in the States and asked how much I had paid for the kit. ($100). Like any other first world society it had never occurred to them to dispense with the flush toilet. Nor were they about to. Some teased me about it later, but I was happy that I had earned my place in the EM technological revolution. Pictures of the workshop on my flickr site. 

It was in this context that I realized my aversion to toilet paper. As a connoisseur of composting toilets I was a compost purist. I did not like seeing toilet paper in my compost plus it would fill up the bucket faster though it was perfectly ok to add toilet paper to the mix. It would compost just as well. But why buy this chemically produced tree product at all given the Thai option of washing my bum while squatting over my poo bucket and gently pouring water from a bowl with my right hand. Getting poo on my hand (the left one as is traditional in bum washing countries) was not inherently dangerous. Or we wouldn’t allow babies to sit in soiled diapers. People do wash baby’s bums don’t they? How much had we just been taught that it was abhorrent to have contact with one’s own poo? And by whom? TP makers? Why would frugal Americans give up the pages of the Sears catalog for such a wasteful product? There was no real reason I concluded. Just an industrialized country’s status marker. I just wash my hands super well afterwards. More than I had ever bothered to before. More than most toilet paper using Americans given the reports of fecal matter on touch screens everywhere. heh. 

Lockdown

Returning to the states the virus was just making its appearance. On the day of the Bay Area lockdown I saw on TV at Catherine’s house the local mayors and health officers each taking their turn to voice their support of the decision. I was heartened by their concern for the people, for us. They were actually going to do this unprecedented move to protect us from the overwhelm the Italians were experiencing with their health care system. It was rare to experience such concern from local government. This was the town where the rich had their way and tech companies called the shots. The housing crisis and mobile homelessness in the RV population bearing witness to the priority to keep expanding jobs, but not housing.

The Friday before the lockdown Catherine and I had gone out to dinner to celebrate her getting a job with a tech company in San Francisco. And now she was crazy busy on boarding on line with everyone else who was able to work from home. Such fortuitous timing to at least have a job during this time. While I kept one shut-in weekly client. My mother and her partner Bill and my immediate circle were all ok too, but for those colleagues who faced economic devastation their stories foreshadow a vaster crisis that may very well not garner the same sympathy. As a nation we would far rather root for life over death than for equity for the poor. My thoughts went to every small businesses I relied on from acupuncture to karate that were now closed. 

Some with the most to lose financially were posting that the death statistics of COVID-19 were wrong, that the virus was overhyped and there was no reason for a shutdown of the economy. Just look at Sweden. Well we shall see if their argument holds. The virus was bringing forth everyone’s belief system like nothing else had. Low grade conspiracy theories (as opposed to those with a kernel of truth) were popping up all over. Humans live on stories. And would die by them too I could see. Witness misguided vigilante types buying out the supply of guns and ammo to protect themselves from the supposed government plot to control their freedoms. I made it my coronavirus job to challenge such stories as they crossed my feed and comforted myself with the relative calm of Asia handling the virus with a more prepared system of  tracking and isolation that didn’t require a lock down. Plus public education and free masks. The economic price of our lockdown would, however, have serious consequences. One that did not bode well and concerned me more than the virus.

Having seen Thailand process through the currency collapse and economic fallout when the Asian Tiger countries went down in 1998 I am hopeful. I saw the seeds of self-sufficiency blossom during that time and can now participate in the positive movement towards a more sustainable and self-sufficient Thailand. And still more heartening I have seen people of my own wealth class change for the better. It was not the easiest of transitions given the contentious political unrest that happened along the way, but the lessons were learned. The vulnerable in society can no longer be ignored.

I returned to my tiny house for the duration of the lock down and felt blessed by the beauty of my location and the hiking trails that would take me high into the hills so I could clear my head. My studies of the collapse of society had prepared me for societal failure. Useful for witnessing Trump express the full GOP agenda of minimizing aid from the federal government and telling the states they were on their own. I was reminded of the balkanization of the Soviet Union into separate states that took place prior to the collapse of the USSR. What kind of a United States will we become after this crisis? That Asia could take this pandemic in stride made the virus here look like a mosquito felling a giant. I highly recommend the daily newsletter of Heather Cox Richardson an American history professor deconstructing the news from a historical long view saving me much time and reassuring me with historical moments when the U.S. overcame similar crisis. 

 I’m just glad I’m in California especially in the Bay Area where intellect is the dominant influence. Given the political leadership initiating the nation’s first lockdown, I can now envision our wealthy Bay Area community turning an eye towards the self sufficiency of our state for the safety of its people possibly even allowing taxes to be raised. Tech based companies are already moving towards securing their supply lines in the event of global hotspots, with more technological eyes on those sources and more labor at home to manage home grown supplies. What technology that has come out of Silicon Valley of late has been all over the map in terms of having good and bad affects on society worldwide, exploiting addictive behavior and fanning consumer appetite. Perhaps we just needed a life threatening crisis to remind us to lean more towards security for all and be less about individual wealth accumulation. Just as the virus had given us a knife to cut away all the non-essentials we thought were so necessary to our lives so may it give us a mission. One closer to home. May it be so.