SEPTEMBER 22, 2023 HARMONY The bees are back A beautiful thing that I have been seeing lately is the abundance of buzzing activity in the flower beds during my walks. Sadly, summer is winding down, and I have been trying to enjoy it by maximizing my walks. As I battled with a lot of things in the past few years, for some reason I always managed to keep track of bee news, whether it be bee Colony Collapse Disease, large sectors of agriculture shutting down due to the loss of the prime pollinator, bee colonies being devastated by pesticides (thank you Monsanto) or suffering from mite attacks, loss of habitat and global warming. While walking through Gallup Park the other day, as I was prepping my medication, a 420-friendly bee came and landed right on my medical flower. He seemed cool; I tried to explain to him/her that this flower was already cured and didn't need pollination. He just smiled and calmly flew away — he might have caught a contact high, at least I hope so. I hope he got some respite from his pollinator activities. Then there was another bee that tried global bee population? Is the Colony Collapse Disorder still spreading havoc? Are the bees still suffering from loss of habitat and pesticides and mite attacks? To my awesome happy surprise, I got MOHAMMED ALMUSTAPHA Groundcover contributor to attack me while I was inhaling my medication and I ended up having to fumigate him with my own lungs. I am extremely ecstatic that the bee population in Michigan is becoming noticeably more noticeable. I hope that the population throughout the world rebounds so that agriculture can flourish. The more organic we are, the better we will be. Our state depends heavily on agriculture. As an avid lover of Michigan cherries, boy I am happy the bees are back. The increased buzzful activity led me to googling: What is the status of the to read that the efforts of beekeepers seeking to mitigate the loss and the decline of the bee population in the United States have been successful. These beautiful people have been putting intense effort into making sure that the bee colonies of this country stay thriving. Their efforts have paid great dividends. So, to all of you out there throughout the lands of this beautiful nation, thank you for making sure that our bees are surviving, thriving, and happily twerking away the day on our pretty native Michigan flowers. I hope we all get to see them every summer on and on. It really is a beautiful sight; if you ever walk by a flower bed or a bush and you hear buzzing activities, just stop and look — look at them work, not worrying about nothing, not worrying about all the urban warfare that is being perpetrated on them. No pesticides, no mites, no colony collapse disease, no fumigations have been able to put them down because they know what they must do when they are doing it and God bless them for it. I love your sweet honey; I love what you do for the flowers; and I love that you get to fly being productive all day. And I am happy to say that I have never been stung by a bee, which means me and the bees be homies. (But if I do get stung, I will not hold it against you bees.) I am simply happy that your population is thriving here, and I hope that it thrives globally. Amen. May you all go on to pollinate all throughout the world blessing us with non-GMO, non-pesticide, non-monetized, beautiful, organic, whole fruits and vegetables. And of course, most importantly, honey, which goes good as a snack with cream cheese spread over any flat bread of any kind. Amen. “Striving to be a better man today than I was yesterday, and a better man tomorrow than I am today.” GROUNDCOVER NEWS 9 My 80th year times a day for 10 days. I chose the My 80th birthday, celebrated last October, was a benchmark event in my life. Friends Meeting House was the perfect location and my friends Luiza and Elliott did the preparation that made it natural and simple. It did not follow the proposed plan of open mic and dancing because the many smaller conversations were so much more vibrant and better than the original plan. I think everyone met someone new and experienced themselves as born again in a positive social context. The food was wonderful and plentiful, as is common with community based potlucks. Quakers, Mennonites and Brethren are the three historic peace churches and each has a place in my life. They prepared me to have a relationship with the civil and social rights movements of the 1960s. Meeting Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk who Martin Luther King nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, inspired me to be a draft resister on April 3,1968. King was assassinated the next day. His speeches are sacred relics of American history. Beyond Vietnam is required listening for those who want to know the essence of that time in history. What we face today is not a repeat of the past but it rhymes with all songs of freedom. The intensity of wealth KEN PARKS Groundcover vendor No. 490 extraction from the global working class, including the corruption of public funds and the revolving door of the corporate state, is driving the people of poor third world countries to the first world, the core capitalist countries. Simultaneously, first world countries are turning into third world societies as supremacist elites invest in robots and artificial intelligence in order to maximize profits. Human beings become commodities in financial speculation. Pension funds become investors' toys. It can easily feel like one struggle, too many fronts, as we experience the results of our individual and collective actions. My 80th year is full of health challenges that shook me to the core, especially the acute chronic bladder retention that required an ER trip and a catheter for 10 days. I had to postpone a trip to Cuba. When the retention persisted. I was given the choice to do 10 more days or self catheterize three “hands on” option and was in the clear after several successful self-catheterizations. I was able to go to Cuba and deepen the core family of Daniela, the mother I have known since her birth, and Santiago Alberto, our shared son, who will be four years old on November 9 this year. Mother and son are both my “ahijados,” so I am a mentor, protector and spiritual friend. This is common in Cuban culture and promotes a deep and stable family. Daniela began meditating with me in 2006 when I was doing an Amitabha Buddhist retreat in Cuba. My niece Jayme, 23-years-old then, got a virus in her brain stem and went into a coma. I put her in the center of my meditation and Daniela sat with me and we went into profound meditative states, “at one with reality!” What a blessing. Our bond deepened when she announced that she wanted to live with me until I die. As I look at my 81st birthday, that offer is taking on new life as we live in the dialectic of change and what it means to “serve the people,” an important value that was widespread in the 60s and 70s and is reappearing today as we work in this world. I talked in 2017 about doing volunteer work at Karma Triyana Dharmachakra, the monastery in Woodstock, New York. Complex challenges, including the COVID-19 pandemic, changed everything. Daniela did express the intention to live with and care for me until I die, once telling me that when I die I will be reborn to her. We plan to live together and I have an account with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to promote her immigration to Ann Arbor. I do not have the income to qualify as a sponsor but do have support from a backup sponsor which should pass bureaucratic review. Emigration from Cuba is challenging because of visa policies and high ticket prices due to corporate gouging. If the United States would end the blockade, which is an act of war, travel would be easier and emigration less likely. The American people are pretty oblivious to the results of U.S. foreign policy. Haiti is the showcase example of what can happen if you resist colonial or imperialist rule. The election of Aristede in Haiti was not accepted by the “rulesbased order” of investor elites. You may recall that coup d’etat. I hope you read “The People Are The Power” in the August edition of Groundcover News. I believe that perspective will help us “serve the people” in the difficult times before us. I also hope that we look back on the International Day of Peace as we move into the era when we “Compost War and Grow Peace.” “The harvest is great and the laborers are few” as Jesus put it. Let’s take the breath that empowers us to connect and do something good. Let’s plan to celebrate my 81st birthday and the Day of Che on October 8th.
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