I know, 2 posts in 2 days?  Whatwhatwhat?  Has the world gone mad?  Well, I saw this article that says organic food is not more nutritious than conventional food and had to respond.

Is nutrition the only reason to buy organic?  Here are some other reasons I buy organic:

• Fewer (or no) pesticides
• Fewer (or no) petroleum-based fertilizers
• Less environmentally-damaging growing practices
• More money for small businesses and less for huge multinational corporations
• Safer working conditions for farmers and laborers
• More sustainable land use over the long term

Maybe the organic food isn’t any more nutritious because it’s being grown on formerly non-organic land, which had already been sucked dry of nutrients by non-organic methods, even if the land hasn’t been non-organically farmed for at least 10 years.  Maybe it will take a while before the soil is restored enough to provide benefit.

And maybe “organic” food is mis-labeled because of pressure from the industry to loosen the rules.  Maybe some food that’s labeled organic is only 5% better than non-organic because of the billion-dollar lobbying efforts of the huge companies that control the FDA and other branches of world governments.

To me, this is a great example of the media creating a story that distorts the truth and potentially influences people in a harmful way.  I thought a journalist was supposed to take a piece of information and dig into it to discover the truth behind it.

I saw “Food, Inc.” last night. I’d seen “Fast Food Nation” already and was somewhat prepared for a gruesome display of mistreatment of farm animals. While “Food, Inc.” did provide its share of those images, it also gave a good overall picture of the main problem in the American food supply system: corporate greed.

Summary: all food sold in America is controlled by a handful of unnamed huge multinational corporations.  Some of these corporations:

• Choose greed over safety, literally causing (and covering up) disease and death among consumers, employees, and animals.
• Are a primary factor in the illegal immigration problem.
• Employ armies of lawyers to suppress and overwhelm competition.
• Have direct and very powerful influence in high levels of government (FDA, EPA, farm subsidies).
• Are first-line offenders in the destruction of our environment, and
• Are a direct cause of the obesity and health care issues this country is currently facing.

The light at the end of the tunnel: there are plenty of local organic farms that produce healthy, high-quality food using safe, green, well-established practices to grow and distribute their food. We as consumers have direct control over what we buy and from whom. The biggest influence against consumers is advertising and marketing, and consumers must be aware of what’s going on in order to make intelligent choices. Not only that, growing our own food is always an option. It’s healthy in so many ways, it is a no-brainer for all of us to start by learning the basics, grow a few food items in a small garden, and move on from there to provide our families with healthy foods.

Bottom line: see “Food, Inc.” Support the companies that support organic farming. Avoid the companies that actively fight against it. Tell your government representatives how you feel about these issues. Simple choices have a huge impact. Go to http://www.foodincmovie.com for more info.

We have a home equity loan.  We’ve had it for a few years.  It’s mostly paid off, all but about $200.  Our loan is with Bank of America.  We’ve used them for every house we’ve ever had and always had decent service from them, and using them was usually easy because they already had all our information on file.

Now we want to increase the limit on our home equity loan.

About 2 months ago we went to our local branch and started the paperwork.  They said 3-4 weeks.

So three weeks pass.  They call and say they need employment verification.  My employer and Chris’ employer both use a third-party service called “The Work Number” that provides employment verification.  It is apparently a fairly standard practice.  BofA was supposed to already have this, but we shrug and re-send “The Work Number”‘s number and our employer codes.

Two more weeks pass.  Now they need more proof of insurance.  We’ve given this to them before, but for some reason they need reconfirmation.  We get the insurance info faxed to them from the insurance company.

After another week, they need re-reconfirmation of insurance.  We’re a bit concerned, but we get it re-re-faxed.

Jump to today.  The loan was supposed to be completed “Monday or Tuesday this week” for the third time this month.  We get a call that they need employment verification.

Um, what?

We call them.  Apparently they don’t accept verification from “The Work Number.”  Chris and I both contact our HR department.  Neither will provide verification through any other means than “The Work Number.”  It’s their “policy.”  Yay for working for large companies.

We call BofA back.  They insist on having a published phone number for our companies (i.e., from the phone book), that they can call and ask for an HR representative who can verify employment.  Despite the fact that our HR departments have said they will not provide said verification.  BofA says the reason they won’t accept “The Work Number” is that “The Work Number” provides more information than what BofA needs.  Which is patently false.  “The Work Number,” unless an extra laborious process is completed, will only provide a “Yes/No” answer to the question, “Is so-and-so employed at such-and-such a company?”  Which is all BofA say they want.

I look online.  Guess what.  BofA uses “The Work Number” for their own employment verification.  So I guess if any of their own employees needs a loan, they can’t use their own employment verification system to verify their own employment.

Each time we have spoken to BofA, we have asked, “Is there anything else you need?”

Their answer: “No, it looks good.  You should hear from us soon.”

They never told us waaaay back 8 weeks ago that they didn’t accept “The Work Number.”

It feels like they’re playing an inexplicable game with us.

We’ve used BofA for everything.  Checking, savings, credit cards, home loans, car loans, boat loans, everything.  We have good credit.  We have paid our bills consistently for 15 years.  We are good customers.  They decided they didn’t want us.

As of now, we are good customers of someone other than BofA.  When I called “the competition” today, I completed the application on the phone in about 10 minutes.  I got a pre-approval letter emailed to me.  The full application will take 2-3 weeks (though I’m not holding my breath).  Their employment verification process?  They need a copy of our paystubs.  Something at which BofA scoffed.

In my searches online today, I found this.  I was also going to join a Facebook group expressing my spite for Bank of America.  I searched for “Bank of America” on Facebook.  There are about 50 Facebook groups named “Bank of America Sucks” or some variation thereof.  I’m not saying anything in particular here.  You can draw your own conclusions.

Has anyone seen this story about LGBT literature disappearing from Amazon’s ranking lists?  One theory suggests an unknown third party has enlisted their followers to repeatedly mark all LGBT books as “inappropriate,” thereby enacting Amazon’s censorship policy and automatically removing those books from the rankings.

But there are other twists to it.  For example, 18 of the top 20 books in Amazon’s Gay & Lesbian category are Kindle books.  I had no idea Kindle was so popular in the LGBT community.  I suppose this might be a side-effect of de-listing all the printed books, but why would they (assuming there is a “they”) not also attempt to de-list the Kindle books?

Anyway, the first link contains more information, in addition to links to take action, if you so desire.  There’s supposedly lots of activity on Twitter (I don’t Twit, so no idea how to link to it), and there’s also a Facebook Boycott Amazon group.

The past two months have been a blur.  I’m at the end of an aborted journey, and back to a place of relative calm, but just floating aimlessly.  Here’s a summary of the events of the past two months:

Beginning of February: I heard that a small yoga studio about 15 minutes from my house was for sale.  Somehow, it became a “great idea” that Chris and I buy this yoga studio.  It also became a “great idea” to bring in two of my yoga teacher trainee friends as partners.

First two weeks of February: I spent a lot of time trying to decide whether to buy the studio.  I spoke with lots of people, wrote endless notes weighing pros and cons, and tried to list details of what my days would look like if I owned a yoga studio.  My initial gut reaction was fear, but that got drowned out by the excitement, both mine and everyone else’s.

Second two weeks of February: Having put a deposit on the yoga studio, I spent this time organizing all the things that had to happen before we closed on the yoga studio.  The closing date was March 15th.

First two weeks of March: I slept very little, lost about 5 pounds, and became a basket case.  My business partners became a source of stress rather than support, as every decision had to be passed by them, and more often than not, we didn’t agree.  I spent a lot of time with the current owner of the studio, the landlord of the building, and the current students trying to get to know the business and its operations.  My business partners did not.

March12th: I had a nervous breakdown of some sort.  By default, I detached myself from the yoga studio.  Chris communicated this to our partners, and he took over my portion of the business ownership.  I had been teaching at the yoga studio where I was taking my teacher training.  I quit teaching there, stopped going to yoga at the new studio we were buying, and pretty much stopped doing anything yoga related.

March 21st: I completed my yoga teacher training.  Yippee.

March 12th – present: not much has happened.  I’ve spent quiet time trying to recover and figure out what to do next.  Someone mentioned that I didn’t need to have a “next step” right away, and she’s right.  I’m getting bored and restless, though, so I need to start doing something.  I have lost most of my enthusiasm for yoga.  I’m supposed to go on a yoga retreat in May, and I hope I recover by then.  If not, it’ll be a waste of time and money (it’s non-refundable, of course.)  My response to stress right now isn’t very healthy, either.  I’m short-tempered and irritable still.

I learned a few things, some of which are obvious, but in the heat of the moment got lost.

* Listen to my gut.  Ignore most everyone else.  Ignore most rational arguments, including my own.

* Say “no” when I mean “no.”

* Take things slowly.  There’s no hurry.  I hadn’t even graduated teacher training.

* Don’t take on partners.  Ever.  Business partnership is like marriage.  All their faults come to the surface.

* Don’t announce anything to my friends until it is a done deal.  Now I have to constantly answer questions about “how the yoga studio is doing.”  It’s fucking fine.  I wish it were a pile of rubble, but it’s doing just fucking fine.

A couple weeks ago I started going to the gym and working out with weights again and doing non-yoga related exercise.  Yesterday I sprained my wrist lifting too-heavy weights, so now I don’t even have that.  I’m sure it will all work out in the end.  My wrist will heal.  I will recover and start becoming interested in yoga again.  I will find a direction and set new goals in my life.  But right now, I have a shitty attitude and generally feel that the universe can go fuck itself.

Here’s what the shirts look like.  I’ve got more supplies on order and some new patterns to try out.  I’ll try to keep you posted on the progress.

This isn’t new, but I heard the song today and enjoyed it so I thought I’d share it in all its variations.

Color has a big part to play in yoga.  Each of the 7 major chakras has a color.

It was pointed out to me a few weeks ago that my yoga wardrobe lacks color.  I usually wear blue or grey shorts, and a white or grey a-shirt.  I wore what I had in my closet already, and the things fit well and let me move in the various yoga poses.  I recently bought an orange shirt with the 2nd chakra symbol on it.  But it isn’t very tight-fitting and gets in the way when I do yoga.

I looked around for colorful shirts and couldn’t find anything I liked, so I decided to make my own.  I bought some white a-shirts and t-shirts and a tie dye kit and made a mess some colorful shirts of my own.

Once the shirts have been dyed, it takes 24 hours for the color to set.  They need to stay wet, so I put them in plastic bags.  Next time I might just use plastic wrap because in the process of moving the shirts into the bags I think I contaminated some of the colors.  Anyway, here’s what they look like right now:

I’m very eager to see how they came out.  I’ll definitely post pictures of the results.  As this is my very first attempt at tie dye, I have no idea what to expect.  The thing about tie dye, though, is even if a shirt is “screwed up,” it’s still perfect just the way it is.  Hmm, that’s kinda profound.

One of the things I’m struggling with in my yoga practice is cultivating non-judgement.  One of the precepts of yoga is when we come onto our mats, we accept where we are in our practice, we don’t judge ourselves compared to our fellow yogis, and we feel gratitude for our capabilities.  Rather than lament what we don’t have, we acknowledge what we do have.  I hadn’t really thought about it before I started yoga, but gratitude and judgement are on opposite sides of the attitude spectrum.

When I’m on my back on my mat, stretching my hamstrings, a strap wrapped around my foot as I pull and tug on my leg to get it closer to my chest while keeping it straight, rather than judge how inflexible I am, I try to be grateful that I have the time to practice yoga as much as I do, grateful that I have a leg to be able to stretch, grateful that my heart still beats and lets me experience what it is to be alive.  More often than not, I feel frustrated that I’ve been practicing yoga for as long as I have and I sometimes feel as though I’m not making any progress flexibility-wise.  Cultivating an attitude of gratitude isn’t as easy as it sounds.

I recently read that one of the secrets of yoga is taking the lessons we learn on the mat and applying them to our daily lives off the mat.  Just as I try to be grateful while I’m stretching on the mat, afterward as I drive home from the studio, rather than judge the person in front of me who drives too slowly, I can be grateful that I can afford gas to drive myself anywhere I need to go, grateful that at that moment I haven’t gotten into an accident, grateful for just being alive.  The same goes for the long line at the grocery store.  And the idiot management at work.  And the greedy CEOs of the failing American corporations.  Rather than judge and be critical of others, I can try to focus on myself and be grateful for what I have.  And when I forget and return to  judgement, I can be grateful that I am aware enough to realize what I’m doing, and gently return to a place of gratitude.  It seems to be a never-ending cycle.

Looking at the first sentence of this post, I realize part of my problem may be that I am struggling rather than letting things flow.  It’s how I do so many things: I struggle with them, struggle against them.  I don’t just observe how things are and accept them.  That whole “change what I can and accept what I cannot change” thing doesn’t come easy for me.

Which leads me to an affirmation: I cultivate an attitude of gratitude both on my yoga mat and in my daily life.  I change what I can, and accept what I cannot change.  I go with the flow.

I had a yoga Teacher Training session last weekend.  It was actually a light weekend from a physical perspective.  Only about 7 hours of yoga over the two days.

On Saturday we talked about the 3rd chakra.  Our morning yoga class focused on that chakra.  It had some pretty intense poses in it, but was otherwise a fairly normal intermediate flow class.

We had a guest speaker who came to talk about Shiatsu.  Basically Shiatsu is a pressure-point massage technique that uses ideas similar to accupressure and accupuncture to release blocked energy in a patient.  After some introductory lecture, we paired up and followed his lead to do some simple techniques on each other.

One of the revelations of the discussion was the parallel nature of yoga and Shiatsu.  Both philosophies talk about energy channels in the body.  Shiatsu calls them meridians, yoga calls them nadis.  The goal of both is to release blocked energy.  Both heal the whole person, physically and emotionally, and resolve the cause of disease rather than treating the symptoms.

Another revelation was after doing the Shiatsu, even a few basic techniques, my voice was clearer.  I was able to chant louder during class.  Other people noticed I was louder, too.

I found Shiatsu so intriguing I immediately started looking online for Shiatsu schools.  Whether I actually follow through with that idea remains to be seen.

Sunday was our mid-term exam.  I had been studying for a couple months.  I had flash cards, spreadsheets, and lots of notes.  The people I was staying with hadn’t really studied, but they used my flash cards to brush up on some terms and definitions.  We had no idea what to expect on the test, and in fact I thought all my studying would be worthless for the test.  It turns out I studied for exactly what was on the test.  I aced it.  Not that it matters.  The teacher never even saw the papers.  We handed them in, she re-distributed them to different people in the class, and we graded each other’s papers and gave them back to each other.  It was a practice run for the final exam to let us know what we had to brush up on.

Our discussion Sunday was about the principles of back-bends.  We practiced Camel pose, Bridge, and Wheel.  We also finished some discussion about the 3rd chakra and moved on to the 4th chakra.  Our morning class focused on the 4th chakra, but it was a basics class and had a few new people in it, so it was very mild physically.

As usual we finished Sunday with two classes back-to-back: a regular flow class and a Yin class.  The flow class itself ended with two Yin poses, Frog and Swan.  Of course, the Yin class, taught by a different instructor, also had those two poses in it.  It was amusing to hear the entire class groan when the instructor announced each of those two poses in the second class.  You probably had to be there.

I left the studio Sunday evening charged up as I usually am after a Teacher Training weekend.  Monday morning I went to Group Power class at the gym and actually increased my weight for a lot of the exercises.  Then I did the 1 1/2 hour yoga class at the gym.  It’s amazing how much energy yoga releases in me.  Rather than being exhausted, I’m energized.