I was fortunate enough to be instilled with values of cooperation and community investment as a youth. So when I moved to Minnesota sixteen years ago and discovered the co-ops here I knew I belonged. My working membership quickly turned into a job that sustained me through out my college years and beyond while I struggled to figure out what I want to do with my life. When I left that job to pursue my dream job (which I am still fortunate to have and love) I knew I wasn't ready to let go of my co-op. So I ran for the board of directors and won. Twice. But a third time is not to be.

But as much as it hurts I don't disagree with events and am looking forward to the silver lining I am sure will show up - once the tears stop flowing. The new directors who were elected are all amazing candidates who will likely bring a lot to the board we didn't even know was missing. And the experienced directors who are currently serving are amazing and will be able to carry on the work that is important to our co-op. Hopefully some of it will also be the work that I think is important. There was so much I was going to do!

Yet, even as my plans and dreams come crashing to the ground I sense a new openness, combined with a bit of "sour grapes" that helps soften the blow. After all, I was ambivalent about running for a third term. There are other things I want to do! New things - different things! And most of all, it felt selfish to run again. Had there not been two open seats I wouldn't have done it. I have learned and benefited so much from being on the board for six years that I want every member who enjoys meetings, working collaboratively, and thinking on a policy level to experience it. For this reason, I rarely vote for incumbents on our board, despite that they are all doing a great job. We have such an amazing business structure and successful, well supported, functional board (which I have heard is rare) that it seems greedy to keep it to the same nine people year after year, no matter how much we like each other and feel productive.

Then the grief returns - this is the end of an era. I think. After all, I don't know what I am going to do next and some of those rainbows on the horizon definitely have a cooperative hue.

However, as a Buddhist I am appreciative of the opportunity to be aware during the in-between time. When one opportunity dies it is so easy to tumble forward into a future that seems most comfortable and familiar. Hopefully, instead I can use this opportunity to reflect and direct instead of doing something just because my parents started me on that trajectory before I had much of a choice.

So, I want to let this be the end of an era, or at least have that option along with all my other options. Regardless letting go isn't easy. Change is hard, even when I do see the boundless opportunity in it.

After welcomes and introductions, the evening started out with LaDonna Redmond from IATP. An inspirational speaker, she painted a very important big picture around what exactly food justice is, why it is critical and pointing out that we have never had a fair, equitable, just food system in this country - ever.

That last statement stopped in my head and keeps echoing around in there. Ever! ever... ever... We have never had a fair, equitable, just food system in this country... ever.

Redmond pointed out that when we go back 20 years and you find the beginning of GMOs, go back 60 years and we were getting into pesticides and petro-chemicals after WWII, go back even farther and you start run into slave labor or share cropping which was still exploiting people and land - both of which we continue to do today to get our food to us. As a member of the co-operative food movement for the past 35 year (if I count all the equity my parents made me put into it when I was young) it really made me pause and reevaluate how we talk about the food movement and just how radical we are in our goals.

Later speakers all tied the picture of the growing food movement together, outlining its aches and pains in the cities. I learned that in Minneapolis it is still illegal (and has been since the 1960s) to grow food in the city to sell. Urban farmers talked about how difficult it is to find a place where they can process food they've grown into shelf stable (or at least more shelf-stable than fresh vegetables) products that add value. As painful as it was to hear of all the lacks and struggles that occur on a regular basis, all in all the night was incredible uplifting and inspirational. I left thinking this is truly a time of growth and expansion for enterprises that promote community well-being and general common-wealth.

Are our wings not melting as we run out of oil? As the CO2 parts per million goes higher and higher trapping too much heat inside and melting all our glaciers, changing the jet streams, raising the temperatures, increasing the storms?

Oh Icarus, we never did learn from your lesson.

Lots of thoughts flitter through my head but none have matured yet enough to make it on the web site.

I haven't officially abandoned this site (yet) though. I'm just still thinking of its purpose, definition, and asking myself 'what is really worth sharing with the world?'

Number one is form - just what is, whether smells, sounds, sights, or other types of forms. What trips me up about this is that although forms are there, number one isn't our interaction with them, our interpretation, perception, reaction, or anything - that all comes later. It really begs the questions of a tree falling in the forest with no one around. However, instead of grappling with the question any longer, I'd rather move on to number two: Sensation

Sensation is so easily paired with number one that I really wonder why they are separate - but perhaps that is the narcissist in me. I have a hard time believing anything exists that I don't know about. What I love about this aggregate is its simplicity. It is simply the fact of sensing the form. So you have the form, whether it is sound, sight, solid, or all three and then you have the hearing, touching, seeing - and that is all. This one doesn't include how we feel about it - that comes later with "perception".

Number three - perception is also fairly straight forward. This is not the thought but the gut reaction of towards, away, or neutral. After all, with every sensation we respond in one of those three ways - whether or not we are conscious of it (consciousness comes later). What I love about these first three is how well they are connected and how easy it is to imagine one leading to the next. I imagine a baby, first just being, then noticing sensations, and almost immediately going towards some (like warmth), away from others (such as hunger), and leaving quite a few neutral (maybe the sight of auntie's face).

It is numbers four and five that have me stumbling, not comprehending - commonly called "mental concepts/volition" and "consciousness". These have to do with pure awareness and a type of action that is more complicated than perception but not necessarily conscious. It is with mental volition that we create karma but I still don't understand how and the subtleties of this aggregate. Nor do I understand how consciousness fits into the whole puzzle - and how exactly do they fit together? Do they move on a timeline, one after the others in the way they are listed or can they flip and skip? Can we have consciousness without sensation or form without perception? If so, how? If not, why separate them in this way?

I've heard that understanding the skandhas is key to understanding impermanence, interdependent existence, and dukkha. I grew up aware of the aggregates yet with no intimate knowledge of them. Somehow, I felt I understood interdependence and impermanence - yet can I really understand these two concepts without understanding the basis of how Buddha described the arising of our sense of self?

It is disconcerting to see how spoiled I am in wanting what I want when I want it. This probably also explains the 10 pounds I've packed on in the past year.

But lately I've gotten even more wealth in the form of art. One week apart I was able to see two performances on stage. The first, "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" was a sometimes humorous and sometimes painful look at music and prejudice in the 1920's. The second was experiencing my first Opera, Verdi's "La Traviata", a heartrending story of a cortesan who experiences love and tries to give it up for the sake of her loved one's family.

Both of these performances were beyond words. But what I can say is that they were beautiful musically (in very different ways) and both were delightfully haunting. It's been so long since I've seen live performances I am still surprised at how it continues to sit with me long after the show is over.

I love taking the bus for many reasons - the sense of community, the delicious exercise of walking to and from bus stops, it increases my punctuality and encourages patience when the bus isn't punctual. However, I do believe it makes me a worse automobile driver.

Bicycling on the other hand, makes me a better driver - though some call it "granny style" driving. I tend to go slower, I realize how blind I am in a car (as compared to on a bicycle), it makes me more patient and alert to my surroundings. However, after riding on a bus, I tend to drive like a bus driver - who totally rule the road. I've seen them tailgate, jump into traffic in front of cars, honk impatiently at cars ahead of them, only come to rolling stops at stop signs, and they run yellow and (just barely) red lights like mad - all in the hurried mad dash to get to the next stop. A bus driver, who is serving hundreds if not thousands of people every day and drives hours and hours so knows the capabilities of his vehicle, may be able to justify this type of behavior. I on the other hand, have no excuse - only inspiration to drive even less.

All day as I worked I kept thinking of this guy who in the last weeks and months of his life was giving his time and skills to others and making his community a better place in such a tangible and felt way. I know tons of people who are working to make the world a better place but still, I wonder, they are working towards whom's opinion of a better place? I love it when I hear of people who ask, "what needs to be done" and then with a smile on their face they get to work. And that's what they do till the end of their days.

It should be noted that during the whole time I was sick I was doing all the things I learned over the years to take care of myself. This included drinking tons of hot tea and ginger lemonade with honey, the occasional dose of Apple Cider vinegar, lots of facial steam baths (to clear out the sinuses) and once my fever was gone, using my neti pot. Before the cough got so bad I was getting lots of sleep, watching comedy and reading good books (since laughter is supposed to be the best medicine) and laying low. Yet this cold wasn't going away!

At the second visit my doctor gave me two prescriptions to help the cough, one of which would also help me get to sleep at night. And she recommended I take a super strong over the counter sinus and allergy medication. These doses of western medicine have worked wonderfully.

After three nights of good sleep, with my cough minimized to a productive morning routine of pulling out whatever crap fell into my lungs over night from a postnasal drip that I blissfully slept through and my sore throat reduced to an occasional ache that is soothed by citrus I am shocked at how much energy I have. I was actually able to organize my storage unit, finally putting up the air conditioner and fans we no longer need and pulling out all our winter clothes, which we soon will need. Thank goodness for this energy - there is so much to do! Being sick is like being sucked into a black hole or being frozen while time slips by. I can't believe that fall is officially here and October nearly upon us.

I just wish that the two week time warp happened in say February instead of now - when I missed some of the most beautiful days of the year. That said, I hope I've time warped enough for the year. Last time I got this sick was October of last year - lets hope this is a once a year deal.

We already have a cat who came, much loved, with my boyfriend. She is surprisingly playful for a four-year-old and quite talkative. I love her with all my heart.

When I decided to adopt a kitty, I looked forward to a young playmate for Frida - someone who wouldn't mind being up at two in the morning. When I met Milo, I knew he would be perfect. He was timid enough to let her rule the roost but playful enough that they would be able to keep each other entertained. I envisioned two fluff balls chasing toys through the house and climbing on things and darting under other things. My sweetheart says someday this will happen.

But the current reality is tough. Miles is so shy unless I pull him out to cuddle, he hides under the bed (and then, once he's all loved up he plays for a little while before running under the bed again). Frida when she smells him gets angry and hisses. So for now we have to keep them separate - for the first time ever doors are shut tight in our apartment. And then I worry about my new little kitten - has he come out from under the bed yet? Is he lonely? Worried? Scared? I really hope he's not eating my bamboo plant again. I wish I had swept and mopped under the bed recently...

At work I've become the data person. I love numbers when they relate to something concrete - the latter part of that sentence is just important as the first part (and why I am not a mathematician). My assumption is that economics is relational data. It is based on measuring the flow of energy, in the form of goods and services and sometimes dollars or other currency. However, too often it seems to just measure the flow in a straight line instead of a circular one - with "waste" being the end product. As a Buddhist I know there is no such thing as waste - or if there is it is a verb and not a noun. I'd like to study the difference between what I call "traditional linear" economics and a circular one - which is what I believe we are moving into as we realize how small this planet is and how finite our resources are.

In the February edition of the Economist (I am still catching up on my reading), there is a special section on data. I had never thought of data as a "waste product" until reading this:
Mr Mundie of Microsoft and Eric Schmidt, the boss of Google, sit on a presidential task force to reform American healthcare. "Early on in this process Eric and I both said: 'Look, if you really want to transform health care, you basically build a sort of health-care economy around the data that relate to people'," Mr Mundie explains. "You would not just think of data as the 'exhaust' of providing health services, but rather they become a central asset in trying to figure out how you would improve every aspect of health care. It's a bit of an inversion."

This inversion is exactly the sort we talk about in the zero-waste world, where we too feel we are at the exhaust pipe of the production chain, catching whatever those dudes at the top feel like feeding through the engine. Who knew that zero-waste and health care reform had so much in common?

What other applications will wake up to waste created by thinking linear instead of circular (and who knew the latter could ever be a good thing). In a circular economy, as in the real world, there is no tail pipe, there is no "away". The smoke that leaves the engine simply enters our bodies, plants, and whatever else happens to be around. Not only does it cause physical harm, but as the tech geeks above mention, it is a wasted opportunity too. Do a quick search how many airplanes can be built each year from the aluminum we casually discard. And now I wonder, how much information is lost because systems aren't designed around getting the most out it. I'd love to start thinking about how to design a system, an economy centered around no tail pipe. But first I should probably learn more about our current economies work.

Not so great weather for a walk and all the good novels have been read. Its not a verb but somehow I feel noveled up. If I had kids they'd be climbing the walls. Instead it is just my inner child I have to deal with. And the cat. She is literally climbing the walls but that happens on sunny days as well since she is an indoor cat in regular wont of playful company.

The house is clean enough... I guess that means it is time for making messes and crafting!

Even when I tire of it, I love weather. It provides me with the kind of structure that drives other people to stay in school or join the military.

On my way to work I was one of two riders. Last week people had to stand it in the bus was so crowded. On my way home ridership had increased by thirty percent! I was one of three.

There was a beggar on the offramp as we exited the highway. I looked at her noticing her worn clothes and raggedy sign crafted from an old box and felt as I usually do, a bit of hopeless sorrow. This woman, or someone like her is at this intersection most days during rush hour. Due to the holiday there was no wait at the intersection and I watched her behind the protective glass of the bus window as we sped past. I wondered if she realized it was a holiday and why there was minimal traffic. I assume rush hour at this location is a lucrative spot. Would she get more or less donations on a day like this?

To my surprise there was another beggar at the next stop light and this one looked me in the eye - the protection of the glass doesn't hide as much as I thought. How do you look at a beggar? I want to give them dignity without inspiring a false hope that I might give them cash, which I never do. I reflect back on stories of beggars and realize I have an assumption that if I look at them with dignity (whatever that is) they might recover and work their way to not being a beggar. The ridiculousness of this hits me - and I become aware that it stems not from a place of actually wanting to connect with this person but rather from a place of me wanting to look good in the world. Its is amazing how quickly I went from thinking about someone's very real suffering to focusing on me.