June 2008

Leaving the very interesting town and people of Fairfield, Iowa, without my bike, I had a very long bus ride back up to the Twin Cities. The price was worth the inconvenience of sleeping in the Des Moines bus terminal. I gave out quite a few free vegetable seeds in the bus terminal, and gave away the remainder in St Paul where I got my hair cut.

While I was in the Twin Cities, I was able to visit the headquarters of The Nonviolent Peace Force, http://www.nonviolentpeaceforce.org/ I don't recall how I had learned about this organisation, but when I saw that their US office was in Minneapolis, I knew I had to visit!! I so like their approach! Instead of protesting, they provide unarmed, trained civilians to trouble spots as a protective force. These civilians apply proven non-violent strategies to protect human rights, deter violence, and create safe space for local peacemakers to do their work. For example, they accompany human rights defenders and peaceworkers. They monitor ceasefire agreements, demonstrations and other volatile situations. It is far less likely that trouble will happen when there is an outside observer and witness. I have their permission to copy and distribute a DVD about the organisation. So if you would like one, please let me know. I would be delighted to send one to you.

I also picked up some information on an upcoming Peace Conference being held in the Twin Cities Sept 2 and 3. I will be able to attend!! Here is the link, if you'd like to join me.

http://www.peaceisland.us/home.html

Here are a couple of photos from my time in the Twin Cities:

A very appropriate and true bumper sticker,

This reminds me: my friend Mary in St Croix Falls got a doctor bill in the mail for $415. You might expect that for some type of outpatient surgery, but this was just for a simple doctor visit!!!! No insurance. There is something very very wrong with this system.






Here are some photos of one of my all time favorite streets in the Twin Cities: Milwaukee Avenue, and flowers in bloom along the pedestrian walkway there:



The lavender colored flowers here are PJM Rhododendron











Here are a bleeding heard backed by a yellow Euphorbia





Here are some very interesting Japanese Yews in Minneapolis


















My next major stop was the town of St Croix Falls, Wisconsin, where I spent a full week ill and sleeping nearly all the time, until I tapped along with a couple of Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) videos, and my energy came back. (www.emofree.com). EFT was one of the main reasons I was in St Croix Falls - to have my first experience going through the EFT technique one on one with my friend Mary. It was good for both of us, and now I have the confidence to offer to personally help others as I travel, instead of just handing out the DVDs.

Mary was in theprocess of putting in a
vegetable garden for a client, so I went along to help. The first thing we did was put in lawn edging so the grass wouldn't grow into the vegetables. I feel distinctly nervous when I see a vegetable or flower garden 'unprotected' as it were, from adjacent lawn. Grass and other plants just don't mix well!

One day during my visit we went for a walk in the woods. My mission, to find some Trillium in bloom. We eventually found tons of them in the woods along the St. Croix River. Here are some photos from that day:














The leaves of the oak trees were just coming out, and I was struck by the contrast between the spring green color of the leaves and the black of the bark:










Beautiful 'Maidenhair' ferns


















Mary and her daughter Carly walking in the fresh green spring woods of Wisconsin:
















The elusive Trillium grandiflorum, which turns pink as it ages.























Mary on the banks of the St Croix River


















Some large morel mushrooms Mary found on her property. No mistaking these for poisonous mushrooms!!!














Before leaving St. Croix Falls, I spoke to one of the 2nd grade classes at the elementary school, about bicycling, and the MEND trust (www.mend.org.nz), which provides inexpensive prosthetic devices to disabled people in Africa, Nepal, and India.







































Then it was on to the Tour de Pepin, a ride around Lake Pepin (a very wide part of the Mississippi River in southern Minnesota) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Pepin

I chose to do this 35 mile ride partially to spend time with my sister Pat and her family, and also to bring the BOB (Beast of Burden) trailer with me to make sure other cyclists knew of this option for themselves. I try to expose as many people as possible to it, so when gas gets to be $12 a gallon, people will recall seeing this trailer, know they exist, and will investigate buying one. I do this because many folks think that they can't commute or use a bike for their daily needs because they can't carry things. With the BOB trailer, that is no longer an issue. With BOB carrying up to 70 lbs (35 kg), and a couple of pannier bags, I can easily haul 140 lbs of groceries or whatever. Well, not easily if I am climbing a steep grade fully loaded, but you know what I mean! And if I can do it, most people can do it. With the right gearing, you never have to get off and push your bike!


They had a free bike mechanic at the start of the race, and I took advantage of him to help me adjust my brakes before setting out.









We hadn't gone very far when the sky turned dark behind us, and then I looked back and saw it had turned an ominous shade of green. Anyone who has grown up in tornado country knows what that means. It looked like the color of the Hauraki Gulf, up in the sky. We had nowhere to go for shelter along the Mississippi River, so we just kept pedaling. It could have been a disaster, if the tornadoes had dropped on us then. But they held off, and we saw on the news that night that there were many tornadoes generated from that storm that touched down further south of us. It has been a busy tornado season in the US. Here is an amazing video of one that hit Parkersburg, Iowa, just a few miles north of where my sister Sharon lives in Anamosa:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiHJ5J7ulOU&feature=related
This film was taken by the security camera at the local bank's ATM machine.

So anyway, we escaped this fate, but boy did we get soaked!! There is a photo in the Tour de Pepin photos that shows what it was like on the road for those of us who doggedly continued on in the downpour, wondering if we would get hit first by lightning or falling trees!!

http://www.lakecity.org/tourdepepin/photos.html

After the storm passed, it wasn't too bad out, and we eventually dried out - except for our shoes.































Our part of the tour ended in the charming town of Stockholm. Beautiful gardens, interesting bumper stickers, and free blue bikes to ride around town.





































































Then we caught the paddle wheeler across the lake, and back to the beginning of the tour.


































The two weeks after the Tour de Pepin I volunteered full time for Feed My Starving Children, http://www.fmsc.org/ This organization ships millions of specially formulated vitamin enriched vegetarian meals to Christian orphanages and missions and community groups in the poorest countries of the world. They have 500 partners they give food to in Haiti alone. And this is why I volunteered there. I was able to do more good for the Haitians by volunteering for Feed My Starving Children than I could have by going to Haiti under current conditions. This is the most efficient nonprofit organisation I have found yet. Fully 94 % of all donations goes for the food program. Only 6% goes for staff salaries and overhead. All the food is packaged by volunteers. All the bags are labeled by volunteers. Half of all the food packaged is purchased by the same volunteers who come in to package the food. All the supplies (paper towles, hand sanitizer, hand soap, 9 volt batteries for the electronic scales) are donated by volunteers. I worked in the Eagan location, (one of 4 locations). In the Eagan facility, they have 5 shifts a day, can take up to 90 volunteers per shift, and their average is over one box (36 packets of 6 meals each) per person per shift. The output is huge!! I worked on one shift where in an hour and a half we packaged enough food to feed 92 children for an entire year.

Some people criticize the organisation for sending food instead of the means for the people to better grow their own food. But how can you ask orphans and babies and people living in refugee camps to grow their own food, or start their own businesses? How can families have the energy and time to learn new horticulture or business skills when their children are starving, and every bit of their energy is spent trying to get enough food to feed them today? Many organisations working on reforestation, agriculture, microfinance, get over to these poor countries and find they can't make much progress simply because the people they want to help need food more than they need anything else. Once they are fed, they can learn. And this is what Feed My Starving Children does. It provides the food so the experts in these other areas can do what they do best: teaching people permaculture, business skills, AIDS prevention, and other ways they can pull themselves out of their dire situation. The families of the children can concentrate on learning new ways of surviving, without worrying about how they will feed their children that day.

I also know that it keeps kids from getting trafficked into slavery and prostitution. Desperately poor families who struggle to feed their children are at most risk of believing the strangers who come to their villages promising food and education for their children if the families will give them their children. The parents so want to believe these people. They so want to believe that life will be better for the children. So they let them go. And never hear from them again.

Having this food come also greatly supports the missionaries who risk their health and often their lives in these countries, doing God's work. The missionaries must pay for the shipping of the food, but not the food itself. And the partner organisations are chosen very carefully, so that only the most desperately poor children and families receive the food, not the military, not the thugs. In 30 years, only one shipment of food has not reached its destination. And that was many years ago, when they worked with a government in Eastern Europe. Never since. No government funds go into this organisation, and there are no government partners.

One of the projects I worked on was entering the details of volunteers into their database. There were plenty of churches and businesses. But there were also birthday parties and even wedding parties - people who instead of spending their time partying, chose to come to this place and work hard for a couple of hours, and save lives instead.

Their mission dovetails mine. I don't want to start yet another nonprofit organisation. I just want to find the ones doing the best work and help them keep going! And this is one of the best. I recommend it.

I spent a lot of time putting labels on the bags. For this job, disabled people and retired folks often come in and label bags, since packaging the food is a bit much for them physically. Here I am with Bill and Meg, who come in every Wednesday with their home group. Meg insisted I worked with her the next week, and she didn't forget!

After the shifts are done packaging, they are debriefed and told how much they accomplished during their shift. And then whoever wishes to can go out in the shipping area and pray over the cases of food.
I also learned that the huge bags that the rice comes in are also shipped with the finished food product. Shipped to use as housing!!!







Many of the pallets of food have posters made by the children who come to volunteer. Here is one I saw:

The only reason I was able to volunteer for Feed My Starving Children was that my friends Jill and Jeff let me stay with them during this time. They live in Apple Valley with Jill's two boys, a very energetic dog, and two cats. I commuted by bicycle to Eagan, and was surprised at the number and steepness of the hills on my commute! It took usually 3 hours of cycling every day, without dawdling. By the end of the two weeks, I was able get there and back in two hours if I pushed it, which was as much a factor of knowing the streets and the traffic lights as an increase in fitness. I brought the trailer with me every day, so I could plant the seed of cycling in as many heads as possible during my commute. And several times I spotted a guy who commutes on a unicycle!!
One day as I was cycling along a fairly busy road I spotted a painted turtle by the side of the road. It looked like it was stuck in a hole. I stopped to watch it, and see if I could help. Well, after watching it for a bit, I realized that it wasn't hurt. It wasn't stuck in a hole, it was DIGGING the hole!! This turtle was laying her eggs not two feet from the road! She wasn't going to let anything stop her, either, and kept right on working as I watched her and photographed her. I hope she didn't try to cross the road after her labours!

One last thing: I have been very concerned about the US economy for quite a while, especially the collapse of the US dollar. Well, while at Mary and Warren's house in St Croix Falls, I did much more reading, and research on options. And I have found a company which invests in overseas companies directly, not as part of a managed fund. If you are concerned about your US dollar retirement funds, please check out EuroPacific Capital: http://www.europac.net/