Be Part of the Solution

I recently attended the 25^th anniversary of the first environmental conference sponsored by what later became the West Virginia Environmental Council, or WVEC.

It was simultaneously inspiring and disappointing. Inspiring because I was among long-time movers and shakers in the environmental movement in WV like Norm Steenstra, Cindy Rank, Vivian Stockman, Jim Kotcon, Bill Price, and Wendy Radcliff, who  spoke about issues they were working on and passionate about. Disappointing because I was one of only about fifty people in attendance.

One reason this was my first time attending a WVEC conference is that I’ve never considered myself an “environmentalist” or an “activist” on environmental issues.  However, I went because I have come to realize that due to the scope of problems facing our state and our world, all of us must, to some degree, become environmental activists.

The precipitating event for me was the January 9, 2014 Freedom Industries chemical spill which poisoned the water supply of 300,000 people in nine counties of West Virginia including the state capital, Charleston, where I live. I call it Aquageddon. If you experienced it, you haven’t forgotten it. Even if you didn’t, you likely remember the extensive national news coverage of the chemical, “crude MCHM”, about which little was known.  After only a few days, state officials and the Center for Disease Control declared the chemical was present in small enough amounts not to be a health risk.  But even a month or more later, the affected public continued to be highly suspicious of water that had the telltale odor of licorice, which the chemical emits. Questions about what level of exposure might result in long term health risks remain unanswered, and almost a year later there are still people in the affected areas who refuse to drink the tap water.

Prior to Aquageddon, I considered myself a supporter of environmental issues. Given a choice, I always voted for candidates who were more likely to support environmental protection, and on occasion I attended fund raisers, made contributions to environmental organizations, and attended rallies.

In the wake of Aquageddon, I attended rallies and led the singing of “This Land is Your Land,” with new lyrics I’d written about the water crisis and mountain top removal (MTR) mining. I attended public meetings and went to E-Day at the legislature to lobby for the tank storage bill, a bill that passed by a unanimous vote of the WV House and Senate. UNANIMOUS! How often does that happen?

I wondered if this would be a “come to Jesus moment” heralding the beginning of a new day for recognition of environmental catastrophes that have been occurring for decades in West Virginia due to MTR and other lightly regulated industries: poisoned water supplies, flattened mountains, buried streams,  increased cancer rates and other negative health impacts on communities near mountain removal coal mines? Would the legislature take another look at the effects on our water supply and communities caused by “Fracking” in order to decide whether stricter regulations are needed? Would they begin to question the actual cost of burning carbon fuels when damage to roads, water, air, health, tourism, and communities is factored in?

Or was this the Legislature’s version of “giving the Devil his due” in which they would have to be seen doing something because so many rich and powerful people in the state were affected by Aquageddon, but could ignore the by and large rural communities affected by MTR and Fracking. Surprise, surprise, it turns out it’s the latter.

I am not a scientist, don’t like to attend meetings, and don’t want to spend my time walking the halls of the Legislature. But I want to make sure that the environmental heroes who are working to protect us continue to have the resources they need to organize meetings and rallies, to study the impacts that fracking and MTR are having, to take water, soil, and air samples.  Before WVEC was formed, activists from groups working on local issues from all around the state descended on legislators in uncoordinated and overlapping ways. WVEC was formed so the environmental community could speak with a unified voice, sharing information with legislators so they are hearing the facts about the impacts of a lack of sensible regulation on West Virginians. Without WVEC and other environmental organizations, legislators only hear what the industry lobbyists have to say about how laws and regulations might impact their bottom lines.

To help support this critical work, I started a project called AWARE: Artists Working in Alliance to Restore the Environment. AWARE’s mission is primarily to raise funds for environmental organizations in West Virginia, especially WVEC and its member groups, which include the GreenbrierRiver Watershed Association, Ohio Valley Environmental Council, Sierra Club ofWest Virginia,  WV Citizen Action Group, WV Highlands Conservancy, and the WV Rivers Coalition, I hope you will think about what you’re willing to do to help protect our environment, and if it doesn’t include activism, at least make a donation to one or more of these organizations or another like them, or to AWARE, which will distribute the money among them.

Lazy, Hazy, but not Crazy

I can't believe it's almost a month since I last posted to this blog. For months after beginning a strategy for losing weight last November, I posted every week, usually to give updates on my progress and delve into the successes or struggles I experienced. I transformed my eating habits and lost thirty pounds, and though my goal of forty-four pounds remains something I'd like to reach, I've decided to live with this weight for awhile without "trying" so hard to restrict my eating. And so far I've done pretty well, though predictably, I'm at the high range of the weight I decided to allow myself for "maintenance"-- 180 pounds (I had started at 209).

I don't feel like I've been sitting around doing nothing, but I've been decidedly less ambitious than in the months previous to July 3rd when the fundraising event for AWARE: Artists Working to Restore the Environment was held. I had put so much effort into making that a success (netted over $3,000, $2500 of which I'll be distributing to WV Environmental Council and member groups, the rest of which will be used for upcoming projects), that my wife had mused that I was working harder in retirement than I had for years.

So the rhythm of activity has definitely slowed, and I've actually had time to sit down and read a little in the last couple weeks, ride my bike regularly, play a bit more music, even actually doing a "bar gig" of sorts (tip jar Tuesday at the Boulevard Tavern), dusting off a slew of my original songs many of which have not been played in public much over the years, some of which have only been heard by Rita and a couple others. Not that they've been heard by many others after playing Tuesday night -- it was a pretty empty room. But it was good practice, and when I finished my second set and called it a night with a solo rendition of the fiddle tune, Catharsis, a complex G-minor rockin' contra dance favorite, the eight or nine people at the bar clapped and whistled.

Tonight, old friend Joe McHugh and his wife, Paula, will play for a FOOTMAD Wandering Minstrel Concert I organized for them. They live in Washington state and came here to do a couple programs at the Appalachian String Band Festival at Clifftop, WV, and this is their last stop before heading home. I may also play a little fiddle before the anti-Mountain Top Removal at Kanawha State Forest rally at the WV Capitol beforehand (5 pm).

Rita and I fly out in the morning for ten days in Colorado Springs (visiting grandchild, Jack Martorella, and his parents), Albuquerque (daughter Hannah and husband), and points in between. So this is retirement during lazy, hazy, not too crazy days of summer 2014.

Deep Dark Secrets (a story)

I wrote this story a couple years ago...I post it today because I've been just too busy working on my AWARE project to devote time to writing. When I started this blog, Paul Epstein Muse, I thought I'd be posting more of my "creative" writing, stories, or chapters of a book I was working on, than essays or posts that are more reflective, such as the 2 day Diet reports (this week's is posted at the end). I was told by my writing group when I wrote this that it was a bit too heavy handed....what do you think?

Deep Dark Secrets
(c) Paul Epstein 2011

Let’s see, I guess this thing is recording.

Umm, this is Anthony Wallace Casto, Jr., they call me Junior Casto, and I’m down in the Omega #3 under Kenner Mountain on, ummh, November the 17^th, two thousand and ten. There’s been an accident down here and there’s men dead. Two right here in this area didn’t make it to the emergency refuge….uhhn, shoot, I, I r-really do want to live…  I’m recording on this SmartPhone hopin’ the truth will come out someday and them that’s responsible gets what they deserve.

After the explosion, I thought I was already dead. I come to and there wasn’t no sound. It was so quiet, the ringin’ in my ears sounded like wind screamin’ down the holler. I don’t think I was out no more than a few minutes. I didn’t think to look at my watch. It was probably about two hours into the middle shift. I got my breathin’ unit on, took a look around, saw I couldn’t get out and the others in this room was already dead, and come to the refuge shelter. I’m good here for at least a couple days if everything keeps working. Enough food and water for a week or more since it’s made for six men. I figure I got a fifty-fifty chance.

I been down in the mines twenty-six years, and I’ve done about every job there is to do. But I ain’t exactly a coal miner now. I work in the mines, so I’m a miner, but I don’t actually dig the coal, I just work on the machines. I keep things runnin’. What is a miner these days, anyway? An equipment operator.

The explosion didn’t start here. It was probably in one of the other rooms in this section. The continuous miner in this room was down, that’s why I was here. I was inside the fifty-ton monster, workin’ on it. Reckon that’s what saved my life. Anybody that might hear this and not have no idea what a continuous miner is, it’s like a squashed down bulldozer ‘bout twenty feet wide with an arm in the front holdin’ a cutter that looks like a big paint roller with teeth. It cuts into  the coal seam.

If a mountain was a layer cake, the coal’d be the icing ‘tween the layers. The continuous miner crawls through the seam, cuttin’ the coal and shovin’ it back behind at five tons a minute. It’s remote controlled. Like them drones in Afghanistan. They sit in a comfey ole’ chair underground somewhere out west. Like video game players. Nobody shootin’ at ‘em. The continuous miner operator, he’s in the mine twenty or so feet behind his machine, and if he brings the roof down, it’s comin’ down on top of him, too.

A crew comes in behind the continuous miner puttin’ bolts up into the ceiling to keep it from cavin’ in. Another guy dusts with limestone to keep the coal dust from buildin’ up, and another crew has to work on ventilation so’s the methane can’t build up. They was short a couple coal dusters lately, and that’s probably why we had this explosion anyway. Otherwise a little methane might o’ burned off and not gone nowhere. When there’s a lot of coal dust, it blows up big.

It’s the roof bolters who are layin’ back there dead. Willie Ray Tomkins and Punk Wallace. Punk was my second cousin. I told him he ought to find another operation. I told him it wasn’t safe here. But you know how these kids is these days. They don’t believe in nothin’ nobody tells ‘em. They sure as heck don’t listen to experience. Think they know everything. Wonder if it’s got somethin’ to do with them video games they play. They think they can fight and kill anything and everything. Real life ain’t that easy.

Kids ain’t like they was when great-great-grandpappaw Castigliari first come here from Italy to Mingo County, WV when he was sixteen.  He’d already been a miner for three years back in the old country, as the old folks called it. They mined coal by hand back then. They laid on their side in a thirty-inch seam, dug the coal out of the wall with a pick-axe, shoveled it into a cart and pushed it out of the mine theirselves. Nowadays if they ain’t usin’ continuous miner rigs, you’re operating one of them long-wall miners. They’re as big as a few football fields. Roll through the inside of a mountain eatin’ coal and let it cave in behind it. Do the work of a couple thousand miners workin’ by hand.

Course, a lot of guys work on strip mine sites these days. They ain’t coal miners if ya’ ask me. Mountain top removal is just movin’ dirt and rock. They work in daylight. Not much danger there compared to being under a thousand feet of rock.

But still, we wouldn’t have to be dyin’ down here if it wasn’t for them greedy devils upstairs. It’s all about production. You got to get so much coal outta here every hour and if there’s a breakdown then the next shift has to try and make up for lost time. The foreman, he’s like, “Boys, we got to bust ass this shift and we got no time for the b.s. if you know what I mean.” Well the b.s. he’s talkin’ about is all them safety procedures we don’t do half the time. That’s why this is the most dangerous operation in the southern coal fields, and that’s no lie.

It didn’t used to be like this. Not when the union had a lock on things. Oh, there’s still a few union mines workin’ underground operations, but you can’t get on ‘less you got family already inside. Them jobs is like gold. Not that we don’t make good money, too. We do, but money ain’t everything. My daddy and my granddaddy was both union all the way, and they’ve probably done worn out their coffins rollin’ around these last fifteen years since these non-union outfits has taken over and run out the unions.

The union used to keep scabs and non-union outfits out any way they had to. They’d flatten the tires of any miner took a non-union job. If that didn’t run ‘em off, they’d shoot at their radiators. Next time, it’d be the windshield. Not no more. Ben Jenkins, he’s the guy that runs Omega, he’d got around the union by settin’ up little non-union operations that contracted out the work on the cheap. Pretty soon, he just told the union to go to hell, ran his union company outta’ business and opened up a new, non-union company. The State Police went after anybody that tried to stop the scabs, and nobody stood up for the union. Jenkins got the law in his pocket, from the deputy sheriff on up through the state police and into the governor’s office. Then the governor’s people leans on MSHA, the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Them’s the ones supposed to check up on the mine and make sure we’re following all the safety regs. Make sure the emergency shelters is stocked up and the belts is clean, the air’s flowin’ like it should, the equipment is kept up.

It don’t take much to set off an explosion, what with methane seepin’ up out of cracks in the floor and fine coal dust everywhere. If the methane builds up, one little spark can set off a chain reaction when conditions is right. Well, conditions was right today. Two good men dead between me and a cave-in. Don’t know if there’s any more cause I’m totally cut off back here. Just me and two dead men. DEAD! I’m sorry, I can’t…hnnn, hem.

There’s got to be at least six or seven more over in the room where the explosion started. Probably started with a spark from a cutter so the operator, roof bolters, ventilation crew that was workin’ that room, I figure they must be gone just from the blast. How many more depends on how much more roof come down on guys or trapped ‘em somewhere and whether they can get rescue crews down here.

Thing I’m gonna miss worst is my kids, Dreama and Troy. She’s six, and he’s nine. Well, I guess that ain’t right. It’s them’s gonna miss me. Like I missed my dad after that big rock dropped off the ceiling of the Monagan mine and put his lights out. He was only forty-nine. I was nineteen, drivin’ a delivery truck because I’d done vowed and declared I wasn’t never goin’ to work in a mine, but after he died and mom didn’t know how she was going to keep making the mortgage on the house he built out there at the head of the holler, Mama needed me to make enough to make the payments, at the very least. They put me in workin’ right away, the guys in UMWA. They took care of me. They’d say, “look at that Junior Casto—now there’s a miner just like his daddy. You don’t need to hold his hand in the dark, no sirree Bob.” They kept me outta trouble and taught me what I needed to know. Mostly they worked things by the book—they made sure things was safe and everything worked right. And they took care of them that was havin’ trouble. When Jake’s wife got cancer and his mother was too messed up from her meds to take care of his kids, they found ways to cover for him so he’d show up on the books for a whole day even if he only clocked in and dusted one little section. Some of these older guys who were maybe too feeble or gimped up, they’d work it out for them to get a job they could do in a section that wasn’t hardly producing, dustin’ a little bit here and there, do a little maintenance.

It ain’t like that in the non-union mines. They find out you’re sick or you get old and can’t keep up, you’re gone. All about efficiency and production, you see. And if they got a few men out, they put the dusters and ventilators into doin’ somethin’s gonna move the coal out faster. You wouldn’t have that in the union mines. No sir. You had a job to do and they didn’t tell you to do somebody else’s job. If there wasn’t enough workers to mine coal safe in a section, then you’d go over to another section and help them out or you’d just do some maintenance you been puttin’ off for a rainy day, but you didn’t work with no short crews. Sure, your production might be down some, but we was prouder of the number that said how many days we worked without a work accident than how many tons of coal we drug outta here.

Now it’s going back to the way it was. Oh these non-union mines know how to make it look good. They’ll have all kinds of slogans like, “Safety is our First Job!” Or “No Chunk of Coal Worth a Miner’s Life!” They have mandatory safety sessions where we get trained on the new safety equipment and the latest rules and regs. They tell us if you don’t think somethin’s right, just say so and they’ll shut her down. No coal mined until it gets fixed. I dare you to try it though. Tell a foreman it ain’t safe and you ain’t goin’ down and you’ll be lookin’ for a new job next week. 

They tell us MSHA inspectors are our friends, just lookin’ out for us. And then they turn around the next day and give us a heads up when they find out an inspector’s on the way and tell us to go to a different room that day. Or shut down a few rooms and send out a dozen extra dusters before they get here. Because it’s the same ones who’s cookin’ the books. One set of inspection reports for MSHA inspectors and one set for the company managers so they know what the real picture is.

Yeah, that’s supposed to be a big secret, and it is. I’ve asked a few friends here and there if they heard of that and they look at me like I’m crazy. Of course, maybe they’re lookin’ at me like that because they know the truth but know better than to say it out loud. Some of ‘em needs a job that bad. Dexter Mullins said he’s hopin’ to die down here. Really. Because he knows if he dies on the job, the company’s gonna make a big payout to his family. Million bucks, maybe more. Enough to pay off the mortgage, which he got way behind on last time he was laid off, enough for their kids to go to college. Fact is, we all know we got a way better chance of getting’ hurt or sick with black lung than winnin’ the lottery.

Well I reckon I’m gonna shut up. You might be wonderin’ why I ain’t said good-bye to my wife. I’ll tell you why. It’s cause we say goodbye to each other every day before I come to work. We done made all the arrangements a long time ago. We both know it’s just a matter of time. That’s the way it is for the miner. You know there’s a chance you ain’t comin’ home. So I know she loves me she knows I love her and there ain’t nothin’ gonna come between us long as I’m alive. She’ll stay strong for the kids, cause that’s what a miner’s wife does. And everything I’m sayin’ here, she knows it, and she knows that if I don’t come back it’s gonna be up to her to tell what I know. Cause it’s been getting worse every year I been in the mines, and it can’t keep getting’ worse.

More miners been dyin’ it seems every year. They have their investigations and they make new laws about safety equipment that’s needed, but that ain’t the problem. It’s them greedy devils at the top runnin’ these companies and treatin’ us like dogs. No, not dogs, like machines, only they treat machines right ‘cause they know if they don’t get the maintenance they need, the coal’s gonna just sit where it is in this here mountain. No, they treat us like the preacher says they treated the slaves in Egypt. They just worked ‘em to death, and if one fell, another one picked up where he left off. Cause the Pharoah didn’t care nothing about the Jews, they was just work animals to them. And one was just as good as another.

Only they was buildin’ something. They was buildin’ them Pyramids that lasted for thousands of years. And the Egyptians, they was celebrating their leader and sending him off to heaven. That’s what they thought. I guess it ain’t too much different here. Everybody down here loves coal and loves the company. It’s our way of life. In school, you couldn’t say nothin’ against the company or against coal. If someone started talkin’ environment they just got drowned out or beat up. I did it myself, took up for coal. But when you been inside the mines awhile, you start to see things a little different.

You see some of these companies don’t really care nothing about the people who live here. They talk a good game, but they’re just makin’ more and more money so’s their owners can buy another Lexus or another plane and jet off to the other side of the world and have dinner with a politician or a Supreme Court judge who’s going to rule their way in a case to let them screw another worker or a thousand of them, take pensions away from retired miners or their health care, or steal somebody else’s land or pollute the air more or fill our streams with poison or cut down our mountains. They spend more on billboards and TV ads about Clean Coal Keepin’ the Lights On than they spend in Mingo. As far they’re concerned, it’d be better if these little towns died out and we moved so they could mine every square inch of West Virginia. All in the name of jobs while at the same time, every year they buy bigger machines and lay off more miners.

Yeah, I’m probably gonna die…uhnn, ahem, shoot…Preacher…he says I’ll go to heaven. I ain’t been perfect, but I been saved. I’ve got drunk plenty and done things I ain’t proud of. I ain’t always been a great husband, but I’ve done what a man needs to do for his family. Anyhow, I’ve spent most of my life down here in hell, so the preacher says I got a right to spend eternity in heaven. Hope he’s right.

My 2-Day Diet Progress Week 31, June 9, 2014 

Beginning weight 11/3/13: 209 lbs.

Height 5'8" Age: 62

Goal weight: 165 lbs.

Total loss goal: 44 lbs.

Beginning waist size: 43 in.

Current waist size: 37.5 in.

Weight end of this week:  175 lbs.

Gain/Loss this week:  -2 lb.

Total Gain/Loss:  -34 lbs.

Losing Weight, but Experiencing Growth

May I be healed.

May I be free from suffering.

May my heart be filled.

May I find peace.

I don’t remember where I got this mantra. I believe it comes from Buddhist philosophy or the yoga tradition, though I probably got it from a self-help psychology book. I’ve been reciting it for years, not as a regular exercise, but in times of stress, or sometimes just to help me relax before going to sleep.

Reciting this gives me a sense of contentment and even joy. But it has no intrinsic power; it isn’t in itself anything more than a prayer or a wish, words. I learned it during a time in my life, after my divorce, when I was trying to understand myself and my emotions. Why did I stay in a relationship for so long that was dissatisfying and eventually painful? And then how could I, at age 40 (then), “fall in love” at the drop of a hat, then be so pained when it didn’t pan out?

Songwriting and performing was one of my responses to my pain, and I had a period of creative awakening, writing over a hundred songs in the early 90’s from which I chose some and made a solo CD of original acoustic music I titled, “Lessons Life’s Taught Me.”

I also started a seeing a therapist who helped me explore childhood pain, how those early experiences stay in our minds, coloring and magnifying our emotions and responses in the present. I learned not only how to recognize that so that I could keep the present in better perspective, but through a method described by John Bradshaw in his seminal self-help psychology books (The Homecoming, etc.) as “inner-child” work, I actually reduced or eliminated some of the early pain, making me much better equipped to operate as an “Adult in transactions with other people.” I refer there to elements of a kind of psychological model called TA, or Transactional Analysis, popularized in a book written some 40 years ago titled I’m OK, You’re OK, in which, to give the barest and simplest summary, people have three choices or possibilities in any interaction with another person: to be playing a Child role, a Parent role, or an Adult role. To play either Child (needy, immature, manipulative, emotional, also possibly full of wonder, curious, naïve, joyful) or Parent (authoritarian, directive, worried, angry…), often forces the other into the opposite role and causes “tapes” from childhood experiences to run in the background coloring the interaction. Even if only one person can consistently maintain the Adult role, generally logical, not emotional, there is a better chance of keeping the interaction on the Adult to Adult level.

Since the vast majority of people do not escape early childhood without some emotional pain, and relatively few ever go through therapy to help them deal with it, it follows that there are likely a lot of people walking around dealing with various levels of childhood pain coloring their responses to the world. In extreme forms, it might look like road rage, but for most it’s probably just difficulty communicating in relationships or pettiness, overreactions of hurt feelings, anger, sadness, in a given situation.

But before I go any farther, let me correct any impression that I think therapy is the only path to healthy emotions and relationships. Some people, I’m sure, successfully work through programs or exercises provided in self help materials. Others find the same kind of liberation from childhood pain in their religious or spiritual experiences. I actually believe that the goals, or at any rate the potential results of religious practice and that of psychology amount to much the same things.

Fast forward twenty-two years, and you’ll find me, retired in my early 60’s, remarried for the last eighteen years, and in the midst of another awakening of my creative soul, my muse, call it what you will, but not limited it to music. In the past couple months, I must at least partly attribute it to my change of diet, I’ve had a host of creative ideas, many of which I’ve acted on, and to my great satisfaction, they are yielding interesting results.

MCHMess (that’s my word for the chemical spill/water crisis around Charleston, WV that began on January 9, 2014 and continues to affect the conversation here), has had a big impact on me. Those of you who’ve been reading my blog know it hasn’t affected me like most people: I’m not afraid to drink our tap water, though of course I didn’t drink while the advisories were in effect and didn’t choose to drink during the period that odor from the chemical lingered in the water in my house.

No, my assessment was that the efforts to contain and clean up the spill were effective, the chemical, while nasty and not a substance that should ever have gotten in our water, is likely not dangerous at the low levels it has been found in some tap water since the “Do Not Use” order was lifted, and that the CDC got it right or very close to right when they set the “screening level”, the level at which it was not likely to affect public health. That reasoned position is not very popular in the affected region.

My response to the spill, however, was to spur me to action on environmental issues well beyond chemical storage, which is, of course also important. I decided it was time for me to do something more about Mountain Top Removal (MTR) coal mining and to learn more about fracking and its environmental impact. It’s time to get serious about doing something about Climate Change as well.

I attended some meetings and some rallies. I wrote new verses to Woody Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land and sang it at big MTR rally at the Capitol in Frankfort, KY, and again at the Capitol in Charleston. I walked the halls of the Capitol on E-Day, a day when WV environmental groups have a big lobby effort. And soon after that I decided that meetings and lobbying weren’t my best use of time. I decided the people already doing that needed more resources, more money, so I would do what I love to do and do pretty well, create and promote music events. I began talking with others about my ideas, including WV artist Mark Blumenstein, and a Charleston area software engineer and musician, Kevin Crump, and out of those conversations came AWARE: Artists Working in Alliance to Restore the Environment. And now, AWARE is about to “go live” as a project of West Virginia Citizen Action Group which I direct. The website is not quite ready for public viewing, and I’m not going to spend time in this space describing the project, but briefly, we will raise money through holding events: concerts, art shows, craft fairs, and encourage others to do so in our name and send us proceeds. We will distribute the money we raise to environmental action groups in West Virginia (possibly expanding in the future).

I’ve gone far afield in this long blog post, but if you’re still with me, I’ll wrap up shortly. Starting up this organization has been as creative an act as I’ve ever engaged in; it came, as great songs sometimes do, with inspiration and because I was open to my “muse”. Part of my openness to my muse at this time is, I believe, due to changes in my body from losing weight and eating differently.

My metabolism is different, and there are no doubt chemical/hormonal changes—I’m sleeping less (my brother is concerned I may be going through a thyroid induced energy burst which runs in my family and I’ve agreed to be tested), and I’ve been finding when I do my little Yoga routine that is basically a series of stretching exercises I haven’t ever done on a regular basis, I’m compelled to expand the stretches, hold them longer, and try new positions, sometimes experiencing “rushes” of energy as I “open up” into a position my body hasn’t been able to make since youth (and I didn’t do yoga then).

And I’ve found myself reciting the mantra I opened with more, but felt like I needed to revise it to reflect my current thinking. This is what I tell myself now:

May I be one whole being: body, mind, and spirit.

May I be free from fear, anxiety, and the slavery of painful emotion from the past

May my heart be filled with unconditional love.

May I be at peace

My 2-Day Diet Progress Week 22, April 6, 2014 

Beginning weight 11/3/13: 209 lbs.

Height 5'8" Age: 61

Goal weight: 165 lbs.

Total loss goal: 44 lbs.

Beginning waist size: 43 in.

Current waist size: 38 in.

Weight end of this week:  179 lbs.

Gain/Loss this week:  -2 lbs.

Total Gain/Loss:  -30 lbs.

Praise for Tomblin Where It's Due, but Criticism Too

(2 Day Diet stats and update at end)

Dear Governor Tomblin,

Thank you for vetoing HB 4588, the twenty-week abortion ban. A politically difficult decision, but the right decision for our state and the people of West Virginia. The claims of fetal pain were just excuses by the forces of the religious right wing to impose their beliefs on the women of West Virginia. Very few abortions occur between twenty and twenty-four weeks, and then it is doctors and patients together who must make decisions. women every day and help them through decisions about continuing or ending a pregnancy in dire circumstances. And you followed their advice. Bravo! I am a Democrat, I voted for you, and you have with this action made me proud.

But for all the children who are born successfully in West Virginia, I must ask you to reconsider your position on the EPA, and believe West Virginia must find alternatives to burning coal mined by mountain top removal (MTR) coal mining. Fragile infants should not be exposed to the health risks studies have shown exist in communities where MTR is used. It should be outlawed because of the permanent damage it does to our precious mountains, the streams it buries and pollutes, and the damage it does to the homes, lives and communities where it is employed. Not to mention the carbon and other pollutants the burning of coal adds to the atmosphere and the concomitant effects on climate.

Also, if young people are to live decent working lives, you must sign the minimum wage bill and stand with those who stand with the "97%": working people who deserve a living wage, free and fair elections, a trustworthy government that works in the best interests of ALL the people, not just the few and the rich. I am relatively well off, but I stand with those West Virginians who aren't, even if they hold and vote on their mistaken notions that their lives would be better with fewer government protections, regulations, and social welfare programs for those too old, sick, lacking in abilities. Minimum wage workers work as hard as they can and not earning enough for their basic needs. Even a teacher, if the sole earner with children, can be eligible for food stamps!

Governor, you listened to doctors, the experts on women's health and did the right thing. Now listen to the scientists and environmentalists on the effects of MTR on health of the community and on the economy. If you do, you'll come around to the point of view many of us share that without clean air, water, and protection of our wild places from huge industrial interests who want to take but not give back, the economy of West Virginia will continue a downward spiral into poverty such as we have suffered as a state in much greater measure than other parts of our great nation.

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Just a word on this week's progress on the 2 Day-Diet. As I'd hoped when read the book, I would be embarking on a new way of eating that would become, like my decision to exercise regularly after I first learned I had high high blood pressure, a way of life. It is now. If I didn't lose another pound, I'd be happy with my current weight and I don't think I'd gain it back overtime. I'm 2/3 of the way to my goal, in no hurry to get there, and feeling really good about the whole enterprise. It gets easier all the time to eat small healthy meals and avoid snacking too much. This eating program has changed my view and understanding of what the body needs, and I am certain that after I reach my goal I'll be able to maintain it without restricting myself. That's because, it no longer feels restrictive. I eat well. I enjoy my food. It's just a much healthier balance of carbs, protein, and fat, and much smaller quantities than I used to think I needed.

My 2-Day Diet Progress Week 21, March 30, 2014 

Beginning weight 11/3/13: 209 lbs.

Height 5'8" Age: 61

Goal weight: 165 lbs.

Total loss goal: 44 lbs.

Beginning waist size: 43 in.

Current waist size: 38.5 in.

Weight end of this week:  181 lbs.

Gain/Loss this week:  -2 lbs.

Total Gain/Loss:  -28 lbs.