BLAZE

I sawed two boards!

With a cut-off saw! And those of you who know my fear of blades will recognize this accomplishment for the true wonder that it is.

Sorry for not writing much lately. Depression is depressing. I expect to get back to my regularly scheduled weirdness soon.

In the meantime, here's a thought about the circulation of power (ironic, I suppose, in the context of my discovery of sawing), taken from a series of articles about reinventing politics.

State communism and the market fundamentalism of today's globalization era share a belief that a single system, universally applied, can deliver all that is required. Seen in this light, industrial monocropping, genetic engineering and contract farming seem to have much in common with the 20th-century socialist disasters of enforced collectivization. Both are top-down solutions that ignore diversity, on-the-ground needs, knowledge and reality, and a democratic requirement that those who are most affected should have a say in implementation. — Katharine Ainger

In other words, because today's political discourse is dominated by paternalistic government and vicious corporatism, we rarely recognize how powerful we as individuals and communities actually are.

So go out and make the world a better place today. Kiss someone you love and keep smiling!

love,
Leslie

"Autonomy is the right to invent one's own future." — Thomas Sankara