naina devi

red fire dog year

ah, it's not here yet. the chinese new year starts on jan 29 and everything could be different by then.

2006 is here, though, and the theme for the new year seems to be babies. fabulous, soft, perfectly formed, perfectly nontoxic newness.

yes, babies - i've seen 3 new ones popped out of dear friends in the last couple of weeks. starting with my beautiful nephew Axan Ocelotl Sanchez, first baby in the rowdy family, born Dec 7 2005 to the amazing Jessa & Toxtli. check my pics for a picture of him (or several). spent a few days with them in silver city, NM- lovely mining town, hot springs in the valley, ranch, wildcrafted herbs, gentle people. Ocelotl means "jaguar" and he has some crazy cat energy, mewling and bright eyed. the boy does not cry.

the next was on Dec 31st when the illustrious Matt Lewis, host extraordinaire of many new years' past, emailed us to say Vaughan Benjamin had just been born a few days before. pictures attached to the email revealed that VBL may not in fact be conventional cross-pollinated offspring, but a miniature clone of our dear handsome Matthew.

and then! monica came to visit from tijuana, to grace us with the presence of the lovely and brilliant 7 month old Maya Azul. that baby knows what's up. she waves at people and talks already! go monica & victor!

through all this, my journeys through the southwest and to southern cali, the convergence of unlikely stories, people from different times and places, 20 of us together to bring in the new year in varying stories and stages of life and only the human experience in common~~~ through all this, the last weeks have been all about reconnecting with the old and the promise of the new. the cusp of this year bringing together different generations, invigorating existing relationships and building new bridges.

co-creating this web is like manifesting food, and the very fact of its co-creation will sustain each of us better than before. the theme for this year, then, is co-creation: wisdom in collective sustainability.

there is no better way to measure our actions than by their impact on the next 7 generations.

i wish you all joy, health, inspiration, and freedom from fear in the upcoming year.

west south west

having rather magical adventures in the rambunctious southwestern states.

Days one & two

it took us a while to get out of my house in the a.m., mostly because debbie made some kickass mole the night before and there were luscious santa cruz avocados and we were determined to make a feast to go along with it.

on the 14 hour drive that day chris navina & i rocked it under the desert stars: mexican food muy saboroso, a kickass live stevie wonder album (best driving tunes ever), and a rest stop fela dance party. swingin shiz bangin. late night, sometime before midnight our lady moon rose before us, giant and yellow, casting moon shadow light.

we spent what was left of the night in sedona, trippy little new age town but it is a heavy vortex power spot. red rocks, crazy cliffs. it is surreal. i woke early in the morning and walked up the nearest tallest mountain i could find for a a panoramic view. pranayam in sweet dry ancient smelling air. those rocks send you deep into connect with divine, instantly.

i left chris & navina & headed out that day sozinha, warm and sunny drivin down curly roads by a pretty stream in oak creek canyon. made it to the petrified forest and was utterly stunned. i touched the feet of beings that were alive 225 million years ago, asking for their blessing. they still vibrate after all these years, probably more than before. entire universes of crystal inside this bark. minerals rendering rainbow kaleidoscopes - iron is reds and yellows and oranges, magnesium gives us the deep blues/purples/ greens. remembered that shiatsu is something which just happens rather that being given by one to another. remembered that we are stilll breathing their air. these are giant trees, fallen, who lived in the tropics of pangea when we were all one landmass, when there were no borders and boundaries of lands, when there was earth until the water, and then the end of the world as known.

drove north through the painted desert which must be one of the most spectacular landscapes on the planet. deserts scraped and scaped and colored in bands by minerals. soft earth rich layer with fossils of a prehistoric era. it is along the little colorado (colored) river and the plateau contains parts of the hopi & navajo reservations and the very inhospitability of this region has been its blessing. on this planet is mostly only places that are extremely difficult for humans to get to or survive in have succeeded in avoiding our colonization and destruction.

sunset on the desert, and then i began the drive to new mexico. it was christmas eve and little towns were full of lit up creches, bible scenes, pretty paper bags with candles lining the entryway to town for several hundred yards. (towns, however, is a strong word - as far as i can tell, there wasn't anything like a bustling metropolis or even city lights between flagstaff and las cruces. mostly the way i would know i was entering a town was the speed limit would go down to 25 or 30 mph, and back up to 65/75 when i was leaving. then i could say "damn! i bet there was gas back there" also, fyi, hundreds of miles are dead spots on sprint) ah, but it was just me and the night sky and shooting stars and the wild huge expanse of blackness before moonrise and shapes of cliffs mountains off in the distance and rolling through a cold desert night, there's nothing like it for freeing your mind.

ever wonder how much gamma-tocopherol is in a handful of walnuts?

i just wanted to share this website with you guys, i use it often:

www.nutritiondata.com

you can enter in any food item and quantity, and find out what the nutritional composition is. it even gives details on some foods such as which amino acids are present in what quantities, amount of minerals, vitamins and the form they're found in (e.g Vit A versus beta-carotene, Vit E breakdown of alpha, beta, gamma, delta tocopherols/tocotrienols, etc).

one of my favorite features is that you can actually enter in a recipe - the ingredients and the quantities you're using, and it will give you nutrition info for the whole recipe - so you could see for example how much sugar or fiber all the ingredients are adding up to in a dish.

of course as with any nutrition info it all varies and these are just reference amounts from samples - but a head of broccoli will have a different amount of vit C depending on how long ago it was picked, how it's been stored, how it was prepared, the soil it was grown on etc.

short of analyzing everything we eat right before we put it in our mouths, this is pretty helpful.

i just found out that pine nuts have lots of manganese. yum! i ate some for lunch.

ok, have fun with it!

ok vigils are kinda lame

i gotta agree with you, nick (see comments on RIP tookie, below). while standing there outside the gates of san quentin i had this flash of all of us rioting, jumping the fence, storm the prison, threaten mass suicide by cyanide ~ direct action something. vigils only go so far before feeling lame and ineffectual. it was a way to pay our respects, get some media, and underline the impact tookie had on many communities but not a way to really invoke transformation. sometimes i just feel hella frustrated coz i feel like we don't have our shit together as a movement to make change in these situations and it feels like we're a freaken mass of sheep in a pen. as long as we keep vigils outside executions instead of storming the gates the system just gonna keep laughing, placating, leaving the story out of the textbook. it doesn't cost them much to pay a few extra cops with our tax dollars.
revolution, anyone?

R.I.P. Tookie

it is 2:15 am, i just came from san quentin where stan "tookie" williams died from lethal injection administered by the state of California.

Tookie was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize six times for his anti-gang work in prison. In 2003, he published The Tookie Protocol for Peace: a Local Street Peace Inititative, which has helped broker gang truces from Jersey to South Central LA. In the late 90's, Tookie published anti-gang children's books as well as an apology for his role in co-founding the Crips.

It is clear that Tookie alive was worth more to the cause of peace, to stopping gang violence, to making our streets safer, than Tookie dead. Keeping Tookie alive would have sent a powerful message to young people about a viable alternative to the cycle of violence, and could have begun the process of drawing closer a generation whose feeling of disconnect from the political process is unprecendented.

Many of us hoped there would be a last minute reprieve, both on the grounds of Tookie's redemption and pending legislature's decision on AB 1121, a bill that would halt executions until the end of 2007, when a bipartisan commission is scheduled to report on California's administration of capital punishment.

The gathering itself was large and peaceful, and surprisingly diverse. A couple thousand folks, young and old, throughout the night; prayer and meditation; powerful speakers; silence; candlelight.

Nation of Islam minister Christopher Muhammed encapsulated many of our sentiments perfectly when he asked, "If you say Stanley Tookie Williams can't be redeemed, what hope do you hold out for America?"

But the most powerful and inspiring part of the night for me was a number of youth standing up to read from Tookie's book and talk about how his journey had affected their lives - kids who had chosen not to follow the path of gang violence; kids who had or had almost lost siblings to gang violence. In their own words, songs, spoken word, and Tookie's words, young people called on adults to pass the torch, to reach out and include them in legislative battles and decision-making. "You may not be my mom or dad, but I am your future," said a fifteen-year-old girl from East Oakland.

Youth were behind a lot of the organizing for the Save Tookie campaign, as were Bay Area Hip Hop artists, who put together the Redemption CD, available at www.savetookie.org.

The issue of how to effectively utilize all the momentum around California's planned lynching of Tookie Williams came up again and again. Speakers from the NAACP, Campaign to End the Death Penalty, California Prison Focus, Critical Resistance, and many other groups, urged audience members to stay in the struggle regardless of the night's outcome.

Today we stand at a pivotal moment in history. A reformed man, recognized in the international peace movement, a man who had not been tried by a jury of his peers, died last night. How do we make sure this doesn't happen again?

Many nations have successfully eliminated the death penalty. And in 2003, capital-punishment-supporter Republican Governor George H. Ryan declared a moratorium on state executions in Illinois, citing "grave concerns about [the] state's shameful record of convicting innocent people and putting them on death row."

We stood with Tookie last night. Now let's carry his legacy on by working to end the barbaric, racist and inherently unjust death penalty.

For more info:

www.nodeathpenalty.org - Campaign to End the Death Penalty
www.deathpenalty.org - Death Penalty Focus
http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/death/timeline.htm - a timeline of the death penalty
www.prodeathpenalty.com - what the other side says
www.derechos.org/dp - source for international links on the death penalty
http://www.amnestyusa.org/abolish/index.do - Amnesty International's death penalty page
www.criticalresistance.org - national org opposing the expansion of the prison industrial complex

me so dizzy

yeah, so this is just a lil life update from me, coz i have been shamefully negligent in responding to emails and phone calls from all of y'all. but this past week of giving thanks has conjured in my mind and heart so many thoughts of you my spirit family, with whom i feel incredibly blessed.

so, as many of you know, i did in fact manifest the move to the west coast finally... moved into a gorgeous house in oakland about a month ago. feels like coming home... and you all have a standing invite to come make it your home anytime.

what i'm DOING, cause everybody tryin to put me in a box:

ok part of the time i go to school, studying holistic nutrition esp nutrition and immunity // part of the time i am making rad connects & working with all these different orgs in the bay area scene, part of the time i am just eating amazing local organic produce and practicing yoga and rollickin around on my bike and chillin with friends. oh and as of sunday, i am DOWN with DIZZY... that is, i start trumpet lessons! o my roommates are so pleased.

ah, what else. this life is treating me so fine i musta done something right in my last one. this is my first write on this new blog.

& folks have been asking for my address. i'm not posting it here, fools! email me if you want it.

naina's holiday wish list:

socks, your favorite trumpet recordings, a week with glenn black, and of course anything i can decorate myself and look pretty with.