Despite so many published articles, people still do not make the connection between ill healthy/obesity and covid deaths. We do have a health crisis, but it’s not Covid.
In 2001 we were warned by the US Surgeon General that “obesity is becoming an epidemic and it’s a pandemic in the making.”
Such a statement does not require a fancy degree to understand. If you have a large society who is unhealthy due to dietary issues, any strong bug will take them down. And that is what has happened.
Today, in Ameria, one out of three Americans are obese. One out of five CHILDREN are obese. As a school teacher, I witness five year olds so obese that they can’t even sit criss cross apple sauce on the rug for morning circle. Parents can be put in prison for starving their children. What is the difference with setting up your child for a lifetime of health issue related to obesity, which includes diabetes, heart conditions, hypertension and diabetes.
80% of the people who died/hospitalized with Covid were obese. . . many with four comorbidities, but health officials are not talking about this. Why should they? It’s called power and having the power over the people, which includes billions of dollars for vaccines, high doctor’s salaries, psychiatrists and more. It’s a system and it’s a high paying con game.
What has happened to our teachers who can teach children how to eat and how to live a healthy life? Such requires time and money. And given our teachers are making pathetic wages, have little time to even take care of themselves, we need to pull back and reshape who and what we are as a society.
Let’s start with accountability and this happens with fingers pointing straight to Fauci and the medical industry of the last 20 years. WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN AS YOU’VE BANKED ON THE RISING EPIDEMIC OF OBESITY? Even Target plays the game now. Go look at their models on the walls – obese. It’s a system to normalize a body that is unhealthy and that is wrong. Dead wrong.
And don’t even TRY to tell me I’m fat shaming. NO, I’m sticking up for those 80% of Covid deaths who did not need to die had we a proper system these last 20 years, heeding the warning of the US Surgeon General in 2001.
Given what we now know, there is no room for argument: Fauci and the entire medical system should be put on trial for the Covid deaths of those who were obese. They are murderers.
As many call out Novak Djokovic with expletives and anger, I raise my hand. HE WON. He stood true to himself and his principles.
No matter what, there is nothing any government can do or billionaires can shut down. He showed a new game, one to respect yourself, your own body and your health.
He showed us on a global level that nobody can knock you down or even take away something meaningful to you when you stand your ground. The idea of a ball passing back and forth on a court is the little game. He showed us the big one . . . and it’s time for us all to pull out the rackets in order to stop the racket of this charade.
It’s time a generations clean with the horrendous legacy they are leaving us, one that has left us with burning forests, ocean acidification, horrific pollution, exploitative billionaires and now tyranny against our own bodies without a whisper about how to take care of our bodies. It’s not in their interest as they enter their senior years. And my guess is that they are afraid of dying, recognizing that once this generation of baby boomers are gone, we will be pointing the fingers at them for blame and shame for centuries to come.
It’s time for a new generation to step into our government and take over. Yet, they have the money and the power still, so how do we do it when we are the generation broken and poor? We must unite and they must bow down.
2022 is the year. It’s time to take over our government, the younger generation, so we can craft the policies that work for us and our children and believe that we will actually survive.
We have a chance. It’s time for the switch. Let’s call it The Great Shift, on our terms, when it’s not about leaning left or right, it’s about coming full circle.
The 1960s brought in an idea of fierce individualism. As we reflect today, we can bare witness a youthful generation had ideas of standing up to their parents and their society to recreate what they valued as justice, including civil rights and unity. While we cannot shame them for those ideals, we can begin to see another narrative grow and a lesson to be learned – be careful about shaming others without providing the proper respect because what you put out will come full circle.
That’s where we are now – full circle, taking a look at the baby boomers who brought into society, 40 years worth of wars, exploitation, greed and civil unrest, exactly that they had shamed their parents generation in the 1960s.
As we look back at images of the 1960’s Woodstock and the youth singing songs of ideals, we fail to see that same generation heralding and respecting their own parents and grandparents who faced two world wars and an era of depression. The family began to break apart and the 60s youth, boldly with music, literature and art, sought to seek out and create the ideals of fierce independence, as they did.
Think about it. During WW2 when brothers, fathers and sons were being slaughtered in Europe, the following generation, the baby boomers, slammed these same families calling them out with all sorts of blaming and shaming without the respect they deserved, while they played their music, smoked pot and drank their Jack Daniels, hailing it all in the name of peace and good vibes.
And then this:
These last 40 years which have been under their political, economic and social watch, after they became adults, have served their generation. But, in fact, it has ruined them today.
In fact, in the 1980s Reagan, whom they elected with a landslide election, began taxation on social security benefits – the baby boomers literally began taxing their own parents (the ones who served in WW2 and dealt with The Depression!), in order to benefit their large baby boomer generation! Talk about throwing your own elderly parents under the bus! During this same age, never mind the lessons learned from Vietnam, US military expanded hugely which today proves a risk to us as we hear rumblings of a possible military coup, in our own country. What’s more? The taxation of trickle down economics, when the boomers did not hold accountable those who exploit others, essentially providing the nuts and bolts of building us into a society of billionaires who are upsetting our democracy and the power of the people. The baby boomers’ president Ronald Reagan also killed the Fairness Doctrine Ruling which monitored and ensured fairness in media and not propaganda, which we can see we are immersed in corporate propaganda.
Their Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi – the Speaker of the House – who has served as a generational congresswoman even put a statue of Ronald Reagan in Washington in Washington DC to represent California. Reagan should serve as nothing more than a symbol of the gross mentality of exploitation, greed and attack on the people these last 40 years.
Today it is full circle as the baby boomers wind down into their elderly years recognizing the family is gone and what a mess they have left for my generation and all future generations at a time they are asking themselves “Who will take care of me?”
It will be my generation – the X Generation, as we call ourselves who will be responsible taking care of the elderly. We not only have a generation of youth following us seeded in extraordinary college debt but we also have the burden of caring for a huge elderly population who soon will be facing issues of health, dementia and poverty. We have an incredible challenge ahead of us.
We need an immediate shift with policies to address this before our generation, and likely all of American society, literally falls apart due to poverty, loss of democracy and civil rights.
This is one of my proposals. It is a calling for families to reconcile differences and to come together recognizing that family matters deeply. It can serve as our healing process, a connection to blood and the sacred values of home and community. We need to rebuild from the place of the hearth, where good food around a table shared together in the evenings is as valued as a stock market trade. And we need policies that cater to these needs, starting with tax breaks and incentives.
We have tax breaks and incentives to help raise our children, understanding that the future resides in our dedication to them. We want the best for our children. And how we can show our children the best of us is how we take care of each other, including our aging parents. The government should issue tax breaks for those families caring for their aging parents, whether it’s in their own homes or in nearby facilities. Caregivers need better pay and not the slave wages and lack of support they have suffered with. Illegal immigrants have been abused over the years with under the table pay and with minimal wages, another example of the gross injustices and exploitation driven these last 40 years.
Germany set an example of caring for the older people, understanding connection and health are vital for a well groomed society. Senior citizens had benefits for saunas and hot springs locations that soothed them and kept them happy with social gatherings and connection.
California has a tradition of hot springs and more. Let’s us reshape these iconic and sacred locations to help benefit the older people, helping them stay healthy and happy, which will make all of us happy. Such will help heal our land, build community, jobs and a vibrant industry of healing and taking care of our bodies and each other.
And finally, death care. The funeral and burial institutions are exploitative and nobody should have to worry about burials. Let’s create a new system that benefits us all, as green cemeteries rise. For a fee, much less than fanciful and soulless cemetaries of the past, let’s reinvigerate our forests and areas that have burned into afterlife sanctuaries. For a smaller fee, than a typical burial, the state can help fund a tree to be buried in the forest, a full circle economic, environmental and financial benefit to us all, including our forests and the future of our children.
As Governor of California, these are some of the ideas I will create. It’s time for era of peace, humility and the sacred. We have learned so much and now it’s time to put all our lessons to practice as we take care of each other and show our children what a beautiful world we can create.
In stark contrast to the recent article “Unvaccinated? You’re Not Welcome in Marin County” in the Marin IJ by Vicky Larson, I recall a homeless woman I had met last year living under the freeway in San Rafael. She had prepared a bed complete with clean sheets, pillow and blankets next to her bed that laid on the dirt next to her stack of wet cardboard boxes containing her meager belongings.
“Anyone who ever comes here in need will at least have a clean bed to sleep on,” she had told me.
So, there is hope for humanity in elite Marin County, found in the homeless community under the freeway, but surely not in the written pages of The Marin IJ. It is time to end the segregated, self riotious bigotry of Marin County, starting with the likes of Vicky Larson who feel she can sweep away any unwanted miscreants who stand for their own body. She has hooked up with none other than what appears to be the drug cartel that likens itself to drug pushers in the alley filling their own pockets without accountability.
Let’s be clear, the evidence is overwhelming, with just pure common sense. No euphemism can fix it. The vaccines are NOT working. We have been misguided, tricked and conned. Suck it up like a big boy and it’s time to move on before we lose all our civil liberties.
What has shown up is this. . . a complete disregard for health. Again, let’s call it out when we recognize nearly 80% of those who died, according to the CDC statistics were obese/diabetic and had major comorbidities. So, there is a health crisis, one that’s been running for 20 years since the US Surgeon called it out in 2001 that obesity is becoming an epidemic, and it’s a pandemic in the making. The 80% dead could have been lives that could been saved had the 2001 warning been heeded.
Sorry, I am not responsible for other people’s health. And when they try to make ME responsible, while big pharma pocket billions of dollars, I’m going to shoot an email straight to Vicky Larson and tell her to pull her head out of her **** and use her brain. We’ve been conned and articles like hers that drive division and segregation will surely make the homeless woman under the ramp be that inspiration we could all use today.
So, all you unvaxxed heathens, come join us in Marin County and show the rest of the nation what unity and love are all about.
You are welcome ANYTIME. And come to think of it, let’s end the economic and racial segregation in Marin County at the same time. So, those of you hungry, poor, unheard and unvaxxed, you’ll always find a home right here.
For over one year Barbara McVeigh served as a substitute teacher in San Francisco and Marin County public schools in California. In that effort, she had opportunity to observe and learn about our current state of public education. She often witnessed and experienced daily trauma, abuse and often times a disregard for what should be natural – a respect toward another human being.
Her notes herein are not meant to shame or blame, they are to expose a toxic system of disrespect and inadequate schooling so we can reconcile the challenges we have as a means to heal and reshape who and what we are as California and as an American society. Our schools are a mess and given we are in extreme challenges with climate change, working poor, billionaire corruption and collapse of our American civil liberties, we can acknowledge our public schools have failed us. We have overworked teachers, underpaid educators, crowded schools, bully kids running classrooms, bad food, trash, abusive teaching practices and misinformed pedagogical approaches that got rolled out by corrupt billionaires, as our classrooms serve today as commercialized platforms for big tech and junk media.
Education can become the next great frontier to broaden the context of what it means to nurture and cultivate well balanced, happy children who can thrive in and solve a growing environmental crisis that has been exacerbated under the neoliberal decades these last forty years, post President Jimmy Carter who tried to set it right, a four decade span which should be labeled “The Reagan Era.”As in Jimmy Carter’s famous speech, “We have a crisis of confidence.” It’s time for a new era of healing, reconciliation and peace, and to write a new chapter for our history books.
Barbara McVeigh is an international award winning filmmaker, impact producer and teacher. She is the mother of two children and lives in Northern California. When she was 13 years old, her father and less than 12,000 union members, mostly families, took a stand against the federal government, President Ronald Reagan, in the 1981 National Union Strike to demand political honesty and fair wages. Her father was labeled a federal criminal and her family lost almost everything, until the federal courts in 2021 awarded the 1981 strike validation with a return of her father’s losses. Barbara’s memoir Redemption, How Ronald Reagan Nearly Ruined My Life and her other projects serve as messages of hope and resilience for a new age.
It’s time for change. It’s time for healing. It’s time to write a new narrative for our textbooks.
In July I interviewed with Naomi Wolf who is known well in the political circles for her work with Al Gore and The Clintons. We had a vibrant talk about lockdowns, economy, Reagan and more. Thank you to Naomi Wolf and Daily Clout for allowing me to give voice to important issues. https://www.altcensored.com/watch?v=9lgHWyS8IvE
In January, 2020, I was invited to the Alwar International Film Festival in India to share our documentary film The Man Behind The White Guitar, the Life and Music of Brazilian Guitarist José Neto. Here I talk about the film journey in making this international project by artists who gave generously and why. I also share the magic of starting a project and what that can look like for anyone stepping out of their comfort zone to create art, writing or a film project . . . LINK HERE.
We don’t have to look at Indigenous genocide 100 years ago in our country, acts that were not committed by us. We can look at a mere 35 years ago when we supported a US President who joined forces with Guatemala President Rioss Monte and slaughtered men, women and children, Indigenous Mayan, in Guatemala. The years were the 1980s.
President Ronald Reagan called these Indigenous people, the Ancient Mayans, communists, a good trigger word to get support by those afraid of Soviets during the Cold War. But, nothing could be further from the truth. The Mayans have dealt with 400 years of oppression. They tried their best to uprise and say no more to nothing less than slavery these last 60 years. President Rios Montt of Guatemala ruled with an iron fist, gathering support from Reagan and literally wiped out Mayan villages.
What makes the story almost surreal is that Mayan Indigenous workers live amongst us in my community of Marin County, a wealth suburb of San Francisco. The Mayans surrendered to the oligharchy in Guatemala and started a slow stream of immigration to the United States, mainly to work and support their impoverished families back in Guatemala. The family ties are paramount and go deep. The level of respect for the elderly is a value westerners could learn.
Many “illegal” Mayan indigenous are the housecleaners, gardeners, nannies and roofers for the wealthy in Marin, raising an entire generation and adding valuable to what is considered a very wealthy community.
I was one of those people who paid “under the table” to housecleaners. And I would do it again. Because I understand their story. I will support the people before government policies that have destroyed families, communities and countries. I also will be outspoken about President Ronald Reagan and a generation that has chosen not to acknowledge the atrocities of the 1980s and how those unjust policies have contributed to more trauma 35 years later as the Mayan and other Guatemalans struggle to survive.
It’s time for truth, reparation and apologies. It’s time to support Central America as the Bridge Between The Americas. . . the friendship bridge to our brothers and sisters of South America. Nobel Winner Rigoberto Menchu and her book When The Mountains Tremble, is an account of the genocide. She has been an outspoken leader for over 30 years.
“Who is Jimmy Carter?” I asked in a public high school classroom, an ice breaker I’d use for my entire year as a substitute teacher in Marin County and San Francisco County schools.
“A baseball player?” “A terrorist?” “Wasn’t he that really bad president?”
Out of the entire year of over a thousand students I might have gotten one or two answers right, that he was a president. But even then they had no further idea about his historical significance until they Googled him on their phones. “Oh, he was a peanut farmer.”
It’s time to reflect on the words of President Jimmy Carter’s 1979 speech “Crisis of Confidence” when you recognize his administration’s work on climate change, peace and human rights carries a story to shine a light on the absolute horror of these last forty years. You can understand today why Democrats and Republicans would work hard to shun President Jimmy Carter. He makes them all look like criminals. And maybe they are.
“Have purpose,” Carter said to the people when he recognized a growing shift in the American psyche – a drive toward materialism. Following two decades of counter culture, creating new boundaries of American identity, feminism, civil rights and environmental ethos, ultimately the 60s generation cashed out under Ronald Reagan’s policies of Reaganomics (trickle down economics) and crushed working class unions, creating today’s billionaire and working poor castes. But, that’s not all. Denis Hayes, Author of the 1976 book Rays of Hope, Transition to a Post Petroleum World, published by the Worldwatch Institute, who also served in the Carter Administration, says “had Carter gotten a second term, we would not be dealing with climate change like we are today. We were already experiencing changes in the 1970s.”
It’s valid to say the 60s generation brought not only Jimmy Hendrix and The Beatles, but after their big talks and fancy parties, they also brought global climate change and the collapse or our American economy, pitting us in disaster for years to come. It’s not a surprise of the millionaire status of Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. Ringo now does shoe ads for a multibillion dollar corporation.
If Jimmy Carter was a Democrat, why are the Democrats not heralding Carter who tried to stop climate change? The answer is simple. The Democrats grew in line with the Republicans when you recognize the leaders of the Dems herald Reagan, the very president whose policies brought us these economic and environmental policy disasters. Take Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, for example. Ten years ago, Pelosi removed the abolitionist Starr King’s statue in Washington DC to replace it with President Ronald Reagan – a statue to represent the State of California. D-California Governor Newsom created a Ronald Reagan Day to honor Reagan. Several years ago President Ronald Reagan was inducted into the US Labor Hall of Fame despite the fact his crushing of the 1981 National Union Strike led to the collapse of unions across the country. The Democrats have embraced the GOP leader whose policies have ruined not only our country, but arguably the entire planet, yet they contine to point fingers at the GOP.
One has to reflect on that time under Carter whose administration was sabotaged as he boldly stood up to OPEC, the oil giants, with a vision to transform our country into clean energy, likely believing that the people would understand the value and wisdom of such a transformation. Denis Hayes and I discussed in my interview that when you consider who the players are behind OPEC, those with their own military mercenaries around the world doing their dirty oil business bidding, that’s it’s a that wonder Jimmy Carter wasn’t assassinated. The GOP machine under Ronald Reagan came in fast and furious, with enough Hollywood shimmer and glitz to dazzle the country, with the oil giants behind him, leading us into these forty years of wars and exploitation that make The Vietnam War look like small potatoes.
Carter could have become authoritarian, on a Trump like level, to make the energy and environmental changes needed back in the 1970s. Had he done so, we would have avoided 40 years of oil wars and environmental disasters. today we’d be leading a green economy. So, we could blame Carter for our problems today, except for one inconvenient and hard truth – Carter believes in Democracy and when he said “I am not going to do this alone,” he provided the greatest gift to the people of this country to rise and take their own power “as the people”.
Carter’s respect for our American Constitution and the will of the people are the lessons we can learn from Carter today. Most of the students of the public schools believed that Carter is dead today. “No, he’s very much alive,” I answered. If there were ever a time to shine a light on a leader who has walked the talk and preached to humanity the values confidence, grace, peace and humility, both as a President and a Sunday School teacher, it’s President Jimmy Carter.
We have forty years to look back on to witness the dark shadow of greed, wars and exploitation that Carter had to face himself as a leader, and that truth can today give us rise as an entire nation to heed his calling in 1979 “have confidence.” It’s not too late.
The wise ones, I have been told, ask you to be open to what is given to you, the gifts that come your way. Listen to your heart, as it is more true than the head. I would not have believed this, unless I relinquished all that was previously taught to me and decided to take a step onto this path of openness, curiosity and wonder. And it all came full circle when I was asked to join an Acorn Ceremony, in the spirit of the previous land dwellers, the Indigenous Miwok of Northern California, to recognize my spiritual journey into Druidry was my newfound landscape. The Indigenous Native American ways lead me right back to my own heritage of Irish Indigenous practice.
Acorns Being Prepared
Each year the Miwok would harvest the acorns from the Black Oaks, Live Oaks and Valley Oaks, each acorn having a different characteristic and value. It was a celebration that lasted for weeks, bringing everyone together, as grudges and differences would be set aside. Children climbed trees, strong men hit branches with large sticks. Women gathered the rich brown nuts from the ground. The harvest would be a staple for the full year, with the average family consuming 3000 pounds of acorns. Some Miwok families held rights to a particular tree, and as historians have written, the tree would be cared for, stewarded and honored. The acorn harvest season also marked the beginning of a new year. I was invited to join an acorn ceremony on November 1 by my employer. I’m a nature educator for children and our school strives to share knowledge of Indigenous people of California. I hold my classes in the meadows, on grassy hills and under the oaks and redwoods of Mount Tamalpais, a California State Park that borders Point Reyes National Seashore, with the Pacific Ocean to the west. The land includes coyotes, bob cats, mountain lions, raccoons, deer and other native life and flora.
Different types of oak – Black Oak, Live Oak and Valley Oaks, are just a few.
We met for the acorn ceremony late morning in a park filled with oak trees. The ceremony was a bit awkward at first, in a way that we really didn’t know what we were doing except for one noble act – our intention was to recreate a ceremony to honor the oak trees and new season, in the spirit of the Miwok who had lived on the land. So, as a collective group, we decided to first share with each other knowledge we had of oak trees, recognizing the many different kinds of oaks, witnessing their unique leaf shapes and acorn varieties and discussing the areas where they grow in California and beyond. We shared acorn recipes – acorn pancakes, mush or bread. We discussed best ideas to leach tannins of the grounded nuts to make into edible flour. We each stood by an oak tree, resting our hands on a trunk to feel the energy from our arms into the trunk, down to the roots and than back up into our feet and into our bodies, creating a visual energy cycle of connection that we ultimately have with all of nature. We brought acorns to process together, and the music of the pestle against the stone mortar created a rhythm of sound much like that of what would have been heard in a Miwok village, knowing we were near an old village where today only a wooden sign marks its history. We stood in circle together recanting gratitude for the season, giving tribute to the gifts of the day – a blue sky, a soft warm wind, a child’s nearby laughter.
The following day I reflected on this Acorn ceremony, and a thought suddenly came to me about the connection of Oak Trees, Miwok and Druids. The ceremony was conducted the same day as Samhain! It was in that moment I gained an appreciation for the connection between the two cultures, the Druids and Miwok Native Americans, as they both honor nature and spirit. The Gaelic year began in November following the festival of An Samhain. “The cold was considered necessary to cleanse the land and prepare it for the new bountiful year ahead.” writes Celtic Life International. And the moon cycles are respected and used to mark time thoughout the year.
The landscape of my journey into Druidry was now no longer just found in books or podcasts, but it was physical around me. It was no longer just an oak tree, but it proved to be a deeply rooted connection into my heritage, my blood and my physical realm opening me up to everything around me in a new way.
The following week I pondered this sitting in a field with my students. We were stewarding the land and pulling up what has been labeled as invasive nonnative broom that is choking the native plants. Piles of it had been stacked ready for the chipper. I had just cut a stalk and flexed it as it’s easily bendable, creating a ring and putting it on a child’s head like a crown. The child ran off laughing and climbed an oak tree. And suddenly a new thought came to me again. How easy one could weave baskets from this plant!Native American baskets are sacred and the best ones were always gifted to others, as generosity was valued as has been written in the well known book by Malcolm Margolis The Ohlone Way. The Ohlone of the San Francisco Bay live just south of the Miwok and share many of the same values and traditions. Margolis writes in the book that when a hunter brought home the food, the best meat always went to the most vulnerable. Respect was valued. Not greed.
I took home the broom stalk and began weaving a basket, or attempted to weave, to more aptly describe. How strange it was to be in California weaving an invasive plant, which, as I learned, is the same plant my ancestors used in Ireland to weave potato baskets! I had just read up on Irish baskets to learn about the revered “potato basket” used to wash and serve potatoes in traditional households. Potatoes are not native to Ireland, they come from The Americas. Was this a symbolic cleansing? A cleansing of the native land here by creating Indigenous art of my native Ireland! I couldn’t help but think otherwise. As I continued to weave a basket, I was doing more – I was weaving a story to connect indigenous ideas, a reverence, and ultimately a basket to honor these indigenous and almost forgotten ideals and craft. I ultimately completed the basket into the shape of a cornucopia for each of the children and their families filled them with nuts, apples, persimmons and leaves, symbolic of abundance, sharing and gratitude.I think of landscape differently now, both externally and internally.
The gifts are all around us, if we stop and look . . . and to feel. I am complete with the oak tree symbolizing my temples and a woven basket symbolizing a cleansing and a creation to honor the value of the heart, a vessel to give. I’m reminded of the words of Navajo Nation Tom B.K. Goldtooth whom I once met. He said to me that those in the Western world are upside down. Information isn’t important, that which is stored in your head and is always changing. The heart comes first. Good relations. Start there.
Barbara McVeigh 