I'm shocked but not surprised that this year's Farm Bill passed the House by 7 votes with an amendment to cut $39 billion dollars from SNAP, leaving an estimated 3.8 million families without food next year.  Many if not most of these families are working and a significant amount of children will be affected.

While cutting support if not downright starving needy men, women and children is bad enough, there is troubling evidence that those who voted for the cuts are themselves receiving farm subsidies from the same bill.  More for me, less for you, or to paraphrase the bible, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, even though $1 spent on food stamps generates $1.80 in the economy.

Even WORSE, much of the savings will be passed onto the Department of Defense (note: this is a great link to learn more about the effects of cuts to SNAP)!  In a world where two seconds can mean a difference of millions of dollars and the US has the worst inequality of developed nations, the situation keeps getting worse for the least of these. 

Where have our values gone?  Who will stand up and do something??

Check to see how your congressperson voted, and then contact them to say, "Keep up the good fight!" or "SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!!"  You can also sign this petition.

Let us stand up with the poor as we remember the words of Dr. King:

Today I will do my monthly habit of re-lending money on Kiva.org. When my wife Emily and I got married, we decided our wedding gift to our guests would be not just an awesome party of dancing and celebration, but also a card that said we would be investing the money in microfinance loans through Kiva.org.

Kiva allows you to easily make loans in increments of $25 to low-income people around the world.  You get to read their profiles, look at their picture and hear about how their business is going.  It's the gift that keeps on giving, as we've now used our original gift of about $2,000 to re-lend a total of over $15,000 for a total of 157 loans since we were married over 5 years ago!  Get started today for FREE with your own loan of $25 (donated by an anonymous giver).

I highly recommend getting involved yourself.  You have the opportunity to make a real change in someone's life, and then to re-lend the money or cash out once the money is paid back.  Kiva runs on donations, so they will ask you to donate money for expenses, but it's entirely optional.

Here is a video of how some microloans are being creatively used in Uganda.  (I lived and worked in East Africa for a year; click here to read more and see pictures on my blog.)

Next week I will be in North Carolina, visiting friends from Davidson College who now live in Durham and Charlotte.  In case you have not been following the news, there are a lot of people who are angry and getting arrested in North Carolina this summer as the Republican legislature rolls back the state to pre-Jim Crow and Pre-Roe v. Wade times.  Some of the lowlights: 

• There is now NO MORE EARLY VOTING, 
• College students must now vote OFF CAMPUS
• Students may no longer have residency in order to vote (even though Supreme Court upheld student right to vote in 1979)
• GOVERNMENT ID required; however NO COLLEGE ID's ACCEPTED (even state colleges!)
• Polling places are being consolidated.  One case at Appalachian State: 9,300 students will have to drive to a polling place with 35 PARKING SPOTS when the recommended maximum number for a polling place is... wait for it... 1,500 -- THAT'S MORE THAN SIX TIMES THE RECOMMENDED MAXIMUM!  

As a person who went to college in North Carolina, I say shame, Shame, SHAME!!!  It's back to JIm Crow ever since the Supreme Court overturned the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  Will the people rise up?  Who will stop them?

Near Niagara falls, there is a park where the Battle of Queenston Heights was fought.  It was the opening foray of the War of 1812, where American troops crossed the Niagara River and scaled these heights before becoming overwhelmed by the British and forced to surrender.

Fort Drummond, pictured above, was a circular earthworks wall built in 1814 by a British commander (of whom the Fort was named) and for two weeks was used by American Forces during the Battle of Chippewa.  The blue mushroom figure in the background is a fountain of some sort.

I found the whole scene hauntingly poetic... a deserted fort now a deserted fountain... the ghosts of soldiers huddled next to the walls where parents now watch their children play (when they're not on their iDevices!) ... the children, playing and splashing in the water as they dance on the graves of those who fought long ago.

Without getting into the politics of that war nearly 200 years ago, and as we follow the continued civil war in Syria, debating our own involvement, I pray for the day when all battlefields become beautiful like this one.

May swords be made into plowshares.  May forts be made into fountains.

I was recently in Toronto, Canada where I biked along the lakeshore, took the ferry out to Toronto Island and biked some more before relaxing and playing frisbee on some nice beaches.  When I got back in the car to head to Niagara Falls, however, I was without a map - hard copy or on my various devices without an internet or cell connection.  I quickly realized how dependent I was on my smart phone, and how dumb I had become without it.

Indeed, having a smart phone is an addiction for many of us.  Those without cell or smart phones just want some peace and quite, even paying to get away from technology for a weekend.  The video below dramatizes what our lives have become in the smart phone / dumb person era:

The question then becomes, are we more or less connected now in the age of the mobile internet?  Some would argue that we are more connected to those far away but less connected to those around us, especially those we are physically with, and even ourselves.  There is an app for everything to get more and more done via multitasking, etc., and the more we do the more we have to manage and communicate in a never-ending cycle.  

What we really need is a breath of fresh air and to do less. However, it's hard to exit the race when everyone else is caught up in the same tide.  We have to come together, either to escape to technology-free weekends or to agree corporately that our sphere of work is not going to expect us to be available 24/7.  And the surprising thing is, when we set limits in when we work, we actually become more productive.  

Go figure.  But first, stay, relax, take some time to be outdoors and remember what it's like to be a human being without touching something electronic.

* It's not actually Canada that makes me less smart; just not having a cell plan that works in Canada!

UPDATE: A blessing I found in a section called "MAPLESS" from Jan Richardson's "In the Sanctuary of Women", p. 305.

My wife and I made it to Madeline Island, the only inhabited island of the Apostle Islands.  We learned that the island is a sacred place for the local Anishinaabe people and considered to be the center of the universe.  Read some more history of the island.

We were there for a benefit concert by our favorite band, Medicine for the People, and got to hang out with the band members a little bit before the show at Tom's Burned Down Cafe - aptly described to us as a pile of junk with tarps over it.  Apparently it has burned down three (unofficially four) times.  The town doesn't want to give Tom any building permits, so the entire cafe beyond the original deck is built on vehicles so technically it's not a "permanent" structure.  There are all kinds of funny quotes painted and posted around the cafe, from the quaint to the profound.  Some of my favorite are:

Here is a slideshow of our time... at the cafe, during the concert, swimming along Barrier Beach in Big Bay State Park, and then finding a boat buried in the sand at Au Train Bay in the Upper Peninsula, Michigan.  Trivia: Michigan comes from the Anishinaabe phrase mici gama, sometimes seen as Michigamme, which means "great water."