People Power!

Snow aside, we have a nice weekend planned. A dinner date, but where is a surprise, said my husband. There are a few new eateries in surrounding towns, including one Korean restaurant in Simsbury that I’d love to try. Always excited for a dinner date with my old man!

An activist friend convinced me to join the civil rights group ACLU People Power and begin its resistance training program. ACLU People Power is new on the scene, but is an offshoot of and exists under the purview of the ACLU. Its mission, other than consciousness raising, is to train ordinary peeps like me in things like the smartest and most effective ways to participate in public protests, demonstrations, and other forms of Ahimsa political and social dissent.

Public protest is not new to me, but there are effective and not-so-effective methods, and I learned that the hard way in college. With today’s government, raising our voices in the name of justice and peace in the most powerful way possible is more important than ever. I’m particularly concerned about where women find themselves in this new paradigm.

I’m attending my first People Power Action Event tomorrow. Sessions are being held at the same time at more than 2,300 locations across the U.S.; ACLU livestream training is part of evening. I’m looking forward to learning new and better ways exercise Amendment 1; discussing what’s happening in Washington right now; and spreading Dharma for the transformation of the world.

Check out peoplepower.org for a People Power Action Event or meeting near you. Or email them at info@peoplepower.org.

Not much garden work planned this weekend. I’ll probably go through the indoor jungle and prune and pinch and tidy up. I’m especially coddling the two new avocado trees we have going. They’re about a foot tall now, and look healthy and happy. Let’s keep it that way. And the new mango tree is absolutely burly. But this is about the time that indoor mango trees decide to die. They seem to have a hard time surviving infancy. If I can keep it going until May, we’ll be good.

It’s snowing hard this morning. Everything is still and perfectly white. This is surreal in the light of the spring weather we’ve been having. And this weekend, temperatures are dropping into the single digits. But let Mother Nature have her way. She has been a loving parent to us all for a long, long time. As part of returning the love, I won’t gritch about this. I know that we’re just weeks away from playing in the dirt.

Live in peace.