I originally saw our second dog, Rocky on petfinder.com. I knew as soon as I saw him that he was the dog for us. He looked a lot like Clover, but was smaller and male. We thought that all of these things made him very compatible with Clover.  Not to mention that he had the cutest little underbite that gives his face an adorable frowny quality that made me crazy about him.  Every so often, even though I know that we can’t get another dog anytime soon, I look at the site to coo over the puppies available.

I found out a long time ago that there is actually a website with kids posted for adoption in California. Some counties use it more than others, but generally, the kids are difficult to place kids with either large sibling groups or major disabilities.  These kids need as much exposure as possible to increase their chances of getting adopted.  They keep the level of exploitation of the kids at a minimum by making the descriptions pretty vague.

I find this site a little off-putting, but of course, I can’t resist looking, especially now that we are getting closer to the matching process.  With a picture or two and a paragraph, it actually doesn’t seem very realistic that we will actually end up with a kid that I see there, but it is all that I have to go on and so far I have seen a couple of potential matches for us.

By the way, the website is really NOT kidfinder.com. I entered that address in and a splash page from Korea came up.  They may be able to help you find a kid, but it isn’t actually clear what their site is for, but it is probably not for foster-to-adopt.

When we do enter the matching process, we will have access to our agencies books that are filled with pictures and profiles of the kids available from all over the state.  Apparently new profiles are released the 1st and 2nd week of the month and it is a big scene with all of the parents showing up and looking at the books together.

All foster parents are required to take a class through the county or their sponsoring agency.  It covered a wide range of topics from an overview of the fost-adopt process and parenting techniques to typical scenarios that children “in the system” have gone through.  The class was a very positive thing that relieved many of our fears. On the other hand, looking at the big picture left me with a feeling of angst that I haven’t fully come to terms with.

One of the exercises discussed in the class, and also in A Child’s Journey Through Placement was imagining that you are at home with your spouse, who is slightly drunk and watching a football game.  Your spouse and your kids aren’t perfect, but you love them and they are your family.  Suddenly, some people show up at your door and take you away to a different house with a whole other family. The family’s house is really clean and they are all smiling and welcoming, but it is weird and you really want to go back home to your own family. 

This is the first time that it really dawned on me what it means to go and live with complete strangers.  In addition to not knowing us, we will likely be so very different from any people that they have known, certainly very different from their parents.  They may have no frame of reference in which to place us; if they do it may even be negative.  This made me reflect on my own past.

My parents did not have many friends and they didn’t have contact with my godparents from the time that I was about 10. Nonetheless, we had a close, but small, family and I had several friends whose families I was close to.  I think that if something had happened to my parents, I would have had familiar places where I would have been well taken care of.  So if I had places to go, even with the little amount of “community” that my family had, where does that leave these kids?  How ravaged are the communities that these kids are coming from, where there are no family members, no neighbors, no friends of the kids that are able and willing to take them?  Where does this kind of background leave the state of the hearts and minds of these children?

This made me feel selfish, that instead of supporting these communities to keep their children, that through the system, I will support their removal.  Is it just a band-aid solution to find more stable home placements for the kids?  Or, is it breaking the cycle of neglect and abuse that takes place in multiple generations of these families, which in turn will eradicate these wrongdoings.  Many studies have shown that it is better for the children to be removed from these negative situations more quickly and more permanently.  And ultimately, what is best for the children is best for the future.  Right?

What has also been studied is cultural assimilation, which remains very controversial.  As far as child development, most studies show that children in a transracial family can do as well as children in a family of their own ethnicity, provided that they are given resources to connect with people and ideas of their own ethnicity.  The law has used this to rationalize transracial placements if that is the best for the child.  But the flip side of the question is what is best for the community?  Seperatists would most certainly argue that the children can only truly maintain the values of their people by living, eating, schooling and communing primarily with those of their same ethnicity.  I do not know the details of this, but Native Americans have a different level of control over children that leave the care of others in their nation, which takes that issue to heart. 

The county’s philosophy of concurrent planning does a little to remove the conflict from this senario.  They expect the foster parents to join in community with the child and support them and stay in their lives, whether they will be adopted or not.  This is a tall order for people like us, who don’t see ourselves as foster parents, primarily, but as adoptive parents.

Since we do not have children yet or know who they will be, we do not know what is in store for us as far as contact with family members, friends, communities or institutions that the kids will be a part of before we met them. I do know that we expect our lives and relationships to change based on the needs and desires of our children, which may be very different from ours. 

I recently watched Al Gore’s documentary, An Inconvenient Truth.  I didn’t learn anything new since I had already studied this stuff in college.  15 years later, it is totally mainstream.  Although I believed it all along, the fact that it has become more widely accepted has still made it feel bigger to me, more impending, maybe.  The main thing that struck me about the movie is the graphs that Gore uses to demonstrate his points.  And things have changed in 15 years.  The number crunching has improved and the our earth’s balance is on an ever-increasing course to destruction, accelerating along the way.   

Okay, I admit it. I have a dark side…it doesn’t take much for me to start envisioning large scale disaster scenarios, man-made or natural alike.  I don’t know where it comes from, maybe being allowed to watch really violent movies from a young age or from reading a lot of science fiction.  Top this with a college education focused on economic geography and critical theory meant that I kissed any kind of naivite away along time ago.   So, the last few months with water rationing, global food shortages, soaring gas demand, midwest floods and recent earthquakes, I immediately start imagining impending doom and gloom.  Now that I can smell the fires of the last few weeks…I can smell the doom and gloom; and I know that it is much worse where live.

When I saw Mark Morford’s SF Gate column, I was amazed that this kind of thinking made it to the mainstream press, although Morford does tend to be darker than your average liberal.  This kind of mindset has its advantages; I am very prepared…my earthquake kit is stocked and my gas tank stays 1/2 full.

Ironically, I actually think that my apocalyptic thinking comes from a place of hope and optimism.  I have always had trouble reconciling my radical utopian ideals with the process that will actually get us out of the mess we are in and into something better.  I have often considered mass destruction, either man-made or a series of catastrophes driven by nature to be the most likely “solution” to the question.

Of course, environmental and social problems are not the same.  I think that inevitably, they do have a relationship and my assumption is that they drive each other.  I often wonder; how bad can things get?  Not to say that they are bad for me, personally…on the contrary, but I am one of the last people that would be a victim of a systemic breakdown.  The do seem bad around me and moreso, they seem on the verge of getting really bad.  I wonder if my view of the current status of the world is egotistical and due to the fact that I am a product of the uber-materialistic Regan era.  For those who are closer to the Great Depression or the Holocaust, do things look so bad? 

This is not to say that I want mass destruction.  If I see it as the most likely way to the end result that I want, do I have to want the event itself? I don’t think so.  I see many downsides to catastrophe, including the potential for a Malthusian population cut.  I also don’t see a utopian, radical future as the most likely end result to apocalyptic events, there are a lot of other options that would be very ugly and are much more likely.

On the other hand, movements of ecological change and social justice may be taking hold on a larger scale.  Sometimes I think they are, other times I believe that I am in a small bubble of the world in which they are.  Most of the time, I am not really sure that it matters.  At this point, maybe these changes are just band-aids that are keeping the status quo while we progressively march to in inevitable revolution.  At this point, maybe it is just too darn late.

We went into the interviews with our newly found agency with an innocent honesty. We hadn’t really ever been questioned or judged, we were used to being viewed as a stable couple and ideal parents.  This confidence led us to say some things without thinking and led the agency to question us more deeply.

The social worker did an interview, brought the results back to the whole group of social workers at the agency and returned to us with some follow-up questions.

In the initial interview, we talked about everything from our pasts, growing up, being teenagers, meeting and getting married…  Actually considering how much was discussed, it is amazing that there weren’t more issues that required attention.  I didn’t have a particularly happy childhood and was not raised with standards that would suit that of the agency.

The only issue they ended up tagging was J-’s drinking.  Our friends actually thought it was a joke when we told them. He was having about 5 drinks a week. In and of itself, that was not that much, but he does have a history of other drug use AND I said something that made me out to be total co-dependent, that was what concerned the agency.  Immediately after I  said it, I knew I had screwed up…I felt like Dobby, I just wanted to hit my head against the nearest bookcase.  “Bad Dobby!”

In the course of talking about drinking, the social worker asked if I was concerned about his drug or alcohol use. I responded, “I actually encourage him to drink, I would much rather have him drink than smoke. I even bought him a bottle of whiskey for the holidays.”  Doh!  Bad…bad Dobby!

They also asked us about how we dealt with stress.  Part of J-’s answer was that he unwound with a drink… NO!!  Alchohol should not be used as a coping mechanism!!  I think I remember learning about this in high school. We had a class that was part driver’s ed, part sex education and part alcohol and drug education.  No alcohol-based coping…remember?!

As soon as the agency had expressed concern about alcohol in our family, J- immediately cut down to 2 drinks per week.  He started keeping track of exactly when he was drinking and how many of his drinks were social versus at home alone.

In the end, the agency asked that we do 3 months of therapy to discuss our relationship, with some attention to drug and alcohol use. We were lucky that J-’s work paid for it. It seemed like such a luxury to go to therapy and talk about our relationship when we were actually getting along very well. We would spend 10-15 minutes just chitchatting with our therapist about restaurants or life in general, then we would spend 30-40 minutes on a topic that we had usually tried to pick beforehand.  Other than it being a time committment, it was really a non-stressful thing…it really felt like treating ourselves to some time to talk about our relationship with a qualified professional on hand.

At some point, we just stopped buying alcohol to replace what ran out.  The whiskey went first and J- was onto vodka.  Eventually that ran out and he finished the wine.  I just drank the last of the tequila that we brought back from Mexico. I may have to get some more since we have some really yummy margarita mix. We have started developing a taste for beer, which is interesting because it is such a serving-size drink, which changes it somehow.  It is easy to just keep a little bit around the house and not seem like such a drunk. Having a 6-pack in the fridge rather than having 4-5 bottles of liquor in the cabinet just seems different.

The good news is that reducing his drinking hasn’t really affected J- at all and we are appreciated even more by our agency for going through what we did in order to qualify to work with them.   And now, we will be able to use that cabinet space for new and improved beverage choices.  Like uh,  Capri-suns and Quik.

Once we had chosen the right method of adoption, we still had another decision to make.  Did we want to use an agency or become foster parents with Alameda County.  We still had a lot to learn about the process involved with each direction, and how each track affected the amount of support that we would have along the way as well as the access to kids that we would have.

Our first line of research was the Berkeley Parents Network (BPN).   There is so much info there, it is a little overwhelming, although it is pretty well organized. To this day, I am not sure that I have read everything, though. My friend T- had heard great things about an organization that I will call “B-”.  The positive things were confirmed by BPN, so we decided to check it out by attending the orientation together.  We knew they were close to our house and when we decided to walk to the orientation (it is a 10 minute walk!), we realized how close it was.  This was a draw, but ultimately certainly didn’t become a deciding factor.

T- lives in a co-op house and was concerned with the scrutiny that she would have to go though to become a foster parent. She was not feeling like it was a very realistic option for her.  Unfortunately, B- wasn’t really very excited to work with her either.  Each person in T-’s house would have to be fingerprinted.  B- said that they were looking for homes that were as stable and simple as possible, since kids in the foster system already have a lot of complications to deal with.

We, on the other hand, really liked the guy giving the presentation. He made us excited about our future and made us want to sign up with B-.  We loved how they embraced transracial and queer families and looking at the people around us, we felt right at home.  During that orientation, we heard the story of a family that had previously done a difficult adoption from Kasakhstan and all of our signs were saying “go” to working with B-.

The catch was that we weren’t quite ready for a “go”. We still had at least 6 months before we could start…we had a lot to do logistically to be ready.  We filled out a card which explained this and also told them that we weren’t able to participate in the upcoming “PRIDE” training.  At the end of the meeting, they discreetly said that a new social worker would be taking any new clients that they got, not the charismatic and articulate person that gave the presentation.

That is when our relationship with B- started to sour.  We almost immediately got a phone call encouraging us to attend the upcoming training, which we already said we would NOT be attending.  I nicely said “no, thank you”…this is our timeline and we will let you know if anything changes.  Well, I do not think that this woman even knew who we are or cared…we became just a phone call on her list and she called us regularly.  It became a bit of a joke, actually. Each time, I re-explained our situation until I was fed up enough to tell them to get lost; that we would call them.

Next, we decided to go to the orientation for Alameda County.  We heard that by going directly through the county, we would get first choice of kids that come through Alameda County CPS (which is true).  We were sold on the visions that they implanted in our heads of walking into the courtroom hand-in-hand with the bio-mom supporting the best life for the child. We loved the concept of concurrent planning; the first placement of the kid is the last placement…as soon as the kid is in the system, they go straight into a home that is willing to adopt.

Then we met B- and P-, who were neighbors of some friends and had adopted several years ago.  We had a lovely tea with them and their boys and we heard about their experience working with the agency, I will call “A-”.  During our conversation, we were strikingly attached to our plan of working with the county.  But what really struck us was how great B-P were. We left feeling that they were so much like us, just a few years ahead and that they were ideal models for us. We loved how they talked about parenting and how they interacted with “their guys”.

We started to get scared…really scared.  Hearing about the reality of doing this and about all of the support that A- gave B-P made us scared of doing it without the support.  We decided that we wanted to find parents to give hearty recommendations for fost-adopt through the county. We made a number of phone calls and never received the references that we were asking for. The only thing that we were offered were social workers who could tell us the pros and cons of working directly with the county, which we felt like we knew already. And were learning very viscerally as we weren’t getting our phone calls returned.

I also quickly realized that I did not want to be a foster mom. I was happy to be a foster-mom for the opportunity to adopt, but I couldn’t bear losing my kids so that they could go back to their bio parents. Of course, if that was the best for the kids, I would want that.  But, it was worth it for me to have more difficult kids or a more complicated situation in order to have them be mine and stay mine.  I could imagine losing kids once, but not more and the county is asking you to take a big risk with concurrent planning.

As soon as we went to the A- orientation, we felt right at home. There are a number of people on staff who have personal relationships with adoption, so we got to hear their stories.  The staff also immediately remembered our names and our specific concerns and called us the next day to answer our questions. We were immediately assigned a social worker who interviewed us and made recommendations of ways that we could prepare ourselves before we were ever invited to their training.

They totally got into our personal life, we realized that we aren’t really used to not being trusted or to having our decisions dissected.  But eventually, we got through their process and we feel lucky to be working with them.

We knew that there were many ways to adopt kids, although we probably couldn’t have named or defined the methods.  We also didn’t know that the rules of how adoptions happen vary by state and country or that the cost varies considerably and that each method has pros and cons. 

I found the Complete Adoption Book at a used bookstore.  It proved useful for helping us scope out the big picture of adoption.  Our vague understanding of adoption as one big idea became a more clear picture of a several types scenarios that look very different from each other. 

FYI, Here are the basic methods that I will refer to:

• Foster-to-adoption: In California, this method can be done either directly through the county Child Protective Services or with an agency that is contracted and may work with one or more counties within the state.  Typically, a child will reside in your home for 6 months, at which time the parental rights of the bio parents are terminated and the adoption can be finalized.
• Private Adoption: Typically, private adoptions are done with a contract with a mother who is pregnant and is choosing not to keep her baby. If the adoption goes through, the adopting family is responsible for an agency fee, birth expenses and some of the bio mom’s expenses while she is pregnant.
• International Adoption: I don’t know a lot about this, but often the kids are in orphanages of some sort and these adoptions are regulated by the nation’s government.

We had actually decided on our method, without really knowing that we had. We wanted to help needy kids without spending a lot of money. We wanted to help our community by giving kids opportunities that they wouldn’t have otherwise.  We were willing to put in the elbow grease to be hardcore parents…kids with some delays and issues were absolutely okay.  All signs pointed toward foster-to-adoption.

For us, this was a decision that we got reinforcent for at every turn.  We met a couple that had been chosen by a birth mother for a private adoption.  Shortly after, she had the baby and her family decided to keep the baby.  They had already been waiting for a long time to be chosen and were absolutely heartbroken.  They haven’t been chosen again since.

At our first orientation for a fost-adopt agency, we met a couple that had adopted E- from Kazakhstan, who we dubbed as the $50K kid.  They were at the agency because they knew they wanted more kids, but they also knew that they could not go through another international adoption, financially or energetically.  They knew it was going to be expensive, but they didn’t include all the time that they would have to take off of work, travel expenses and the expense of living in another country.  It was also taxing for them to be spending so much time in one place, just waiting…

 We heard negative stories about ALL methods, including the fost-adopt track.  But each the negative stories about our method were outweighed by the positive AND only served to convince us that these were challenges that we were up for.  We heard about kids that needed a lot of therapy, patience and structure.  We heard about the extreme behavior problems of kids that have suffered abuse and neglect and felt hope that we could improve their lives.  We did read about situations that don’t end up working at all; but we also learned that those were exceptions and not the rule.

Over the years, I have participated in many collective working and living projects.  Several years ago, I was recruited by a group called the Matchbook Learning Project. We sponsored classes for adults in the anarchist community.  The vision was a way to keep people in community in times of life that it is harder to stay in touch, when we are becoming more focused on family and household and a gentle and general way to stay political.  This was a success, but many of the organizers fell prey to the issue at hand, we needed to be more focused on our families and homes and did not have the energy to sustain the project in the way that we set it up.

This blog is how I decided to replace that energy in my life. I have long wanted to write more and get back to my zine. I have always considered blogging a great method (if done well)–certainly to keep up a regular writing practice and keep the volume that I am writing high.  On the other hand, there is a lot that is off-putting to me about my political involvement in the world being rooted in words and the internet versus daily real-world interactions.

So, in turn, I have been thinking quite a bit about virtual space and the ways that I do and do not want to participate in it. I think that my whole concept of geography has been shifting. Overall, more and more of our cultures interactions are taking place virtually. This may be more or less true for certain subcultures, but as a whole…this is absolutely the case.  So although, it is not physical; this space does have geographic value.  In part, because the web adds so much to the equation of how things happen over space, which I consider to be a question of utmost importance.

What does this mean for the future of the internet? For the future of our social lives? For the physical space that we move through when we leave our computers? For our bodies and emotions?

 I often think about all of the things in my life that I wouldn’t have (or would be more difficult) without the internet, but I often forget to ask, what am I missing in my life because of the internet?  I am shocked to think of how long it has been since I have been to a library, for example.  I now drive more, work from home and use the internet more than I ever have and I randomly run into people much less than I ever have.  I also meet fewer people, and many of the contacts that I do have have moved away over the years.

I do not consider virtual interactions qualitatively equal to actual ones.  I do know people that feel more comfortable dealing with other people online and their complete social networks are built and maintained that way.  I think that it is aesthetically, I just can’t give that my rubber stamp…it seems wrong.  Yah, you pegged me….I was born before 1980, lol.

I often hear people making judgements about the internet, like “I think that geocaching is a great use of the internet,” or “I’ve decided that blogging is a complete waste of time.”  But, isn’t that like saying that your underwear is better than anothers or that sports are something that no kid should do.  Kinda arbitrary…

There seem to be two distinct areas of social networking–building and maintaining. To my parents, building a social network on the internet is off-putting. They don’t like the idea of internet dating, for example. This is the primary way that many couples that I know have met each other!

Many people that I know find maintaining social networks through the internet to be off-putting. It is one thing to have your social network facilitated by the internet, for example getting notices about upcoming shows or make plans by email. It is another to use the internet for all of ones social interaction. These are extremes, but I do know someone whose primary social network is composed of people that he has never actually met. Of course, there is also the phenomenon of people spending most of their time (and even having actual financial transactions) through virtual communities and games.

 I feel lucky that my social network is actually fairly wide. I do spend a great deal of my time on-line supporting this network. I do try to see the people that I know regularly, but I have come to realize over the last few years, that it would actually be impossible to see everyone that I want to see regularly without compromising some of the intimacy and regularity of my other relationships.  With some awareness that it was happening, I started following a rule around my friends; the closer they live, the more I see them.  This actually has been working for me very well.

I have always taken “non-intentional” community very seriously, even while I have been working on “intentional” communities and cooperatives.  I have always considered being place-based to be the primary consideration for happiness and sustainability.  The thing about the internet, though is that you can “see” folks that aren’t neighbors more regularly and the shape of space is morphed and becomes more a question of presence.

Back in the day, A- had a zine called the Buick ate my Planet.  I don’t remember how many issues came out, but I do remember that it included suggestions of car-free trips and resources and told stories of living car-free in the bay area.  Anyways, I only bring it up to steal the great name (I think it may have been based on an Andy Singer comic or he drew one specifically for her zine) and it seems to me that as time goes on, it becomes more prophetic. 

I have always been skeptical of green cars, maybe because I am grounded as a bike activist, an anti-car person, and I was still pretty attached to those ideas when cars started gaining in popularity as a form of ecological activism and collaboration.  Although I was skeptical, I really never did the work to justify my thoughts, so I always kept my mouth shut.  Luckily, my friend Alexis has done some of the work to articulate issues around biofuel use, specifically in relation to food production in his article on realitysandwich.com (I love that name!). 

He makes an argument that the current emergence of food shortage and threat of famine is an issue of wealth.  New shortages can specifically be linked to the increasing market demand for biofuels.  Even in historic cases of famines attributed to natural disasters, the famine-ravished countries have continued exporting food, while people within the country starved.   Traditional land used for food harvesting or native agriculture have been razed in most places to export to wealthier nations, in turn making the poor country dependent on cheaper, less nutritious grain imports.  This continues to be true, but now the international poor are also competing with  the automobiles of the wealthy for increasingly scarce calories. 

Then came along the Prius.  I had learned long ago that the most “environmental” way to own a car was to drive as little a possible and when behind the wheel to go gently and keep that car running in your own ownership as long as possible.  Somehow, I got turned onto an article that discussed the fact that a Hummer was more ecologically sound than a Prius (I can’t find the article that I read originally, but this is a newer one).  It came down to a few issues 1)The battery 2) The expected lifespan of the car (3 is outdated with the newer hummers, it was that the Humvee parts were stock parts and not specialty-made). 

Reducing our dependency on them and getting rid of cars (for the most part, at least) is the only thing that will solve all of the problems that we have because of them.  There may be accomodations that solve some of the problems or temporarily relieve the impact, but ultimately biofuels or any other modification to cars is going to be a band-aid. (I would make an exception for the one solar powered car that I rode in at Eastwind Community, but I actually think that biking was a more effective way of getting around and hauling.)

I am not exactly anti-car these days. I was REALLY REALLY anti-car for years.  Then, in 2005 I got a dog. In 2006 I got another.  With one dog, it was reasonable to keep her exercised by walking around town and to get her to the vet by foot.  With two, it was not so doable.  Also in 2006, I had the opportunity to move in the mountains for 6 months, which would have been close to impossible to do without a car, which is what made me finally cave.

Our initial months as car owners were completely disasterous.  We were carjacked before we had even transferred the paperwork for our first car.  We had 10 days before we left town to buy another.  We found the perfect car at a great deal. We overpacked and overloaded the car. About 30 miles out of town, I lost control crashed and totalled it on the highway.  We just wanted to go home and never see a car again, but irreversible committments had been made, so we rented a mini-van and made our way up to Washington, where we bought our 3rd car in 3 weeks.

Although it took us a while to recover from the micro-traumas of what had happened, we loved the mountains of Washington and still think fondly of that time.  Gas prices were high, but since we were both driving for the first time of years, the prices didn’t hurt any more than the cost of having a car for the first time, in general.  Much like when I started driving in high school, our car opened up freedom to leave our regular life and explore.

When I returned home, I discovered that driving actually continued to offer me freedom. I became a regular visitor to parks that had been to far or difficult to visit regularly.  I was amazed that I could get to Fruitvale in less than 15 minutes, which I honestly thought was pretty far from my neighborhood. Friends made fun of me, saying that I was the only person that didn’t realize that public transportation took longer than driving.  Well, it wasn’t so much that, but I really didn’t realize HOW MUCH longer it took.

I went through a phase where I felt almost duped by pro-bike people. I had been convinced that I was more free on a bike, that having a car was something oppressive, that by driving, I would spend all of my time with road rage, looking for parking spaces, and sitting in traffic and inhaling exhaust.  This was not the case…I make my driving choices carefully and can get to most places that I want to go in 10-20 minutes and rarely have trouble parking.  Instead of bike touring, where I was still surrounded and threatened by cars, I was able to get into the forest.

Friends that I knew through biking had various assumptions and/or judgement around my use of a car.  One friend asked (when referring to a 3rd person) “How can someone call themselves  an environmentalist when they drive everywhere?”  Another asked if I was adding other things in my life to rationalize my use of the car, ecologically.

I realized at that point, that I no longer chose to identify as an environmentalist.  I had prioritized building my family by rescuing dogs, adopting kids and having a more balanced life.  I wondered if I was becoming a humanitarian.  As a “(many-things-can go-here)ist”, I was making esthetic choices that the world around me could never live up to. I felt that I was sacrificing, while I saw so many others still chose to “have”.  Making choices without an absolutist perspective has led to me being a much happier and healthier person without as much self-judgement, let alone judgement of others.

I still think that cars are “wrong” in a big picture. I still fantasize about being in an eco-city with fewer roads, better public transportation and, better yet, services that are in walking distance.  I also believe that I would put my money, my car, and my house where my mouth is if I saw that option.  On the other hand, I not yet missed the days of NOT having a car.  I am looking forward to the future that J- and I have planned and I see a car as realistically necessary to have that future.  

I absolutely do feel fearful, sometimes angst-ridden about what is happening to our world, socially and ecologically.  I do believe that we are headed for something catastrophic on both fronts and I think that energy consumption in all forms is integral, among other things to that crisis.  I also think that there are no easy answers and actually that the easiest is to start making individual choices to localize our lives and local efforts to de-auto our communities. 

I recently watched the PBS documentary on Jim Jones and the mass suicide in Jonestown. It is almost incomprehensible how many people died there and the destruction of many families that occurred. It is hard to imagine being in a group that harnesses so many hopes and dreams and ends up paranoid and desperate.

Learning more about the People’s Temple piqued my interest in revisiting a group that I used to belong to that had a reputation as a cult and was targeted by the Cult Awareness Network. The leader of this buddhism-based meditation group was Dr. Frederick Lenz, aka Rama. I did some web searching and found Take Me For a Ride.

I was never deeply into this group, like the author. The most intense manipulations concerns only people in the “inner circle” would experience (or at least people much more involved than I). I only even was in the same room with Rama 2-3 times. My meditation group did listen to his music, talk about his philosophies and some people altered their lifestyles based on his ideas.

Although my involvement was only peripheral and some years later, the descriptions were all familiar. I was surprised at how little things had changed. All that he said was completely consistent (although it extended beyond) my experience.

I hadn’t only vaguely understood why there was so much concern about this group and Rama. I was certainly skeptical of Rama’s claims to enlightenment, but I saw young people around me improving their lives and reading wonderful texts. I learned so much about Buddhism and meditation that it was easy for me to take the positives.

I actually learned about the fact that it was considered a cult from within the group itself. I learned about it’s cultness by the defenses…we WERE free to go…we DID get more from Rama that we gave. I wonder now if this was part of the “honeymoon” period, that they were careful about when to bring the “big guns” out.

Towards the end of my involvement, there was more of a push-comes-to-shove feeling. Rama asked for applications from people like me and ultimately asked for people to move to NYC (I do know some people that did). Since I was never very committed to the group or Rama and was mainly committed to the learning process of Buddhism, this process happened around me. I had a lot going on besides the group and the slightest pressure turned me off.

I was grateful to find this book. It was great to have an insider’s perspective to give some context to my experience. It is really well written, I couldn’t put it down. I think it was partly fascinating because it had touched my life, but t is also just a generally intersting story and a great little thread of modern history.

The author approaches his story from a great balance of historical/autobiographical and emotional perspectives. He did a great job of being honest and vulnerable and managing to hold compassion for everyone involved. He has a wise, but unintimidating voice and isn’t afraid to leave things without answers as questions.

Ultimately, Rama drown after a drug overdose. There are claims that it was part of a suicide pact. The book was written before Rama’s death, but to me seemed to hold his death. To me, Rama seemed to only be a shadow in the end. Maybe it is because I know that Rama had died. Maybe the author was spot on with recognizing Rama’s downward spiral from sanity, which seemed to inevitably end in tragedy. Maybe the author had to kill him metaphorically in order to move on.