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Great Rally, Great President!

I am very proud of both my US Senator Michael Bennet and my 21st Century Rock Star Presidente Primero! The Denver rally I mentioned earlier was uplifting and so packed, I got a bit claustrophobic and retreated to the back of the room (where the view and air were better) but farther from the rope line. I would have loved to shake their hands and tell both how great they are doing as 21st Century leaders in ultimately trying times. President Obama, as usual, demonstrated transformative consistency, clarity, rationality, focus, and eloquent, shining charisma.

One thing from him I particularly remember came as an answer to a very loud "Give Them Hell, President Obama!" from someone in the crowd (referring to the mindlessly partisan obstructors of needed progress on Health Reform). Primo Pres immediately answered back: "I won't give them Hell: I'll tell them the truth and they might think it's Hell." Profund, better than Harry Truman, and right on the money, exactly what America needs from its transformative President.

I've been wearing my Obama Inauguration T-Shirts, ever since.

It's funny: I had some comments to my last post which indicated to me that some people read my "21st Century Rock Star Presidente Primero" title for Obama as some kind of slur. Believe me, I am his number 1 FAN, and consider my sobriquet to be the highest of compliments to this great man. We need 21st century leaders who can handle a Rock Star's celebrity with aplomb and grace, as our Primo Prez consistently does!

Gracias, ObamaDoug

OOOO--OOOO--OOOO!

I've bought tickets to a political rally for Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO) at which President Barack Obama will speak, in Denver. It's at the Fillmore Auditorium on 2/18 and I'm sure it will be SRO. I used to attend outrageous rock concerts at the Fillmore in the '60's, with everyone including me looking like the cast of "HAIR"! Now, I get to stand (and leap for joy) and clap and holler for our Primo Prez, our 21st century Rock Star Presidente Primero! Hooray!

Gracias, CenterDoug

Hello, Again!

I'm still not calling myself "ElizabethDoug," but I do love living under Ponderosa Pines, redecorating my apartment, and developing my love for symphonic music and, especially, grand opera. This coming Saturday, I'm being taken by my lover to my first live opera, Rossini's The Barber of Seville, at OperaColorado in Denver. I'm dressing up because it's Opening Night, and, even in casual Colorado, that must mean something. However, I believe it is the first time I've worn a tie in 25 years! Spiffy me!

Things are developing in friendly fashion with my brother Bill upstairs, a surprise to everyone we know, since we used to compete and bicker, being male twins. Seems to work quite well these days. I'm also spending more time with my kids, though most of January, after the seasonal parties, etc., I mostly hibernated in my cave under Bill's house, enjoying the seclusion and solitude. I usually am a recluse in the winter, but not an unhappy or bitter one. I need time to grow myself and to focus on and love me, so that I can love others more effectively. A good deal of journal writing, dream catching, and some sensational imaginative living went on in January and will probably continue in February as well.

While I still communicate with the family Betanco in Nicaragua, it's not the same since I made the decision, for health and personal economics and safety, not to revisit Nicaragua. It feels a bit like Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa: when she left Kenya broken-hearted and busted, she never went back. I also intend to move on forward, though I'll stay in touch.

Sayonara 'til next time.
Gracias, CenterDoug

Everything Has Changed in Nicaragua 2009

I came back from Nicaragua this May a sadder but wiser "wise fool" than when I headed down in January 2009. Strangely enough, I spiralled into a clinical depression down there this year, as I realized how dire things are with the peasantry of Northern Nicaragua and how hopeless I felt and still feel about exerting any change there: in 15 years of building bridges in Teote, nothing at all has changed for the better--though there have been better moments--things are getting worse, and I'm getting too old and unhealthy and poor to carry all that burden.

It's clear that my convenience as a channel of funds from North America (mostly personal dolares) has built me a house of Nica addiction to my money--Damn, Damn, Damn! Something I tried so hard not to do!--and my funds have mostly blown away with the Winds of Wall Street now: going down there fairly empty-handed was unhappy for me and too much bad news for the Betancos. Nothing worked right. To top it off, I felt unsafe there for 5 months because there's such crime and street violence, such starvation and homelessness and need, and everyone I know there came begging because they still think I'm a rico, which I have never been, because, to them, "all Norteamericanos are ricos." When people are living at the survival level, anyone with a steady income is a rico, no matter how small the income.

While I read a ton of books and worked on my garden in Teote, had a few happy times and new experiences, I came back up here depleted, shocked, even a bit traumatized by the trip, and I've been working to get back to emotional health ever since, with resilient success, thank Goodness. But I won't be headed back to Nica next winter.

Conditions will need to change there before I'll go back, though I'll still communicate with the Betancos.

Instead, I'm moving in with my brother in Elizabeth CO by October 1, ending my long residence in Glenwood Springs and Center, exchanged for a more cosmopolitan life lived under rural Ponderosa Pines in Kiowa County, much nearer to my kids and grandkids, concerts, ballet, and other fruits not available on the Western Slope.

New Page for CenterDoug to write on; I doubt if I will start calling myself "ElizabethDoug," however.

Gracias, CenterDoug

Sorry to Say . . . . !

Sorry to say, all you bloggers, that I haven't been very active on CenterDoug since May because I've been focusing on my MyBO Blog, "CenterDoug's Obama Blog" almost entirely. I and a MyBO friend have created a further Community Blog on MyBO titled "Obamans for Change in the Americas (CITA)" which focuses on President Obama's Administration in relation to bettering relationships in the Western Hemisphere and improving the lot of our Native Americans and other indigenous peoples. An interesting blog with verrrrrry interesting bloggers in the group:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/group/ObamansforChangeinCentralAmerica

You'll notice we widened our focus to all the Americas after entitling the Blog and can't change it on the URL. I consider both CITA and the "CenterDoug's Obama Blog" posts as part of my GLOBAL LEGACY to my children: it's that important to me. Check them out.

Gracias, CenterDoug

Peruvian Amazonians

Well, having gotten back somewhat intact from Nicaragua during swine flu emergencies and plenty of fusbal games, it's strange to be back to Blogger, but, here I am, and now I am totally immersed in the mostly unreported crisis in Peru (June 5-7) where the National Guard nixed 60 indigenous people seeking to protest the development of the Amazon Headwaters in Peru, their heritage, a direct result of Free Trade Agreements with the US. Sad to say. The extant FTA policy promotes the decimation of the Amazon Headwater Rainforests--and the destruction of tribal lands where there had been NO TOUCH before, and--yikes, these people need not to be touched, by our rather poisonously-progressive culture.

So, I'm pushing for Obama mediation in this crisis, to begin his quest for Latin American partnership and to protect my breathing past tomorrow, since the Peruvian Amazon Headwaters, which should be a World Wildlife Park, undisturbed, is a major lobe in the "lungs of the world." For more on this issue, check out my CenterDoug's Obama Blog.

Gracias, CenterDoug

Back From Nicaragua, Again

Goodness knows, it's been a long time since I visited this spot, but, for some reason, I was blocked from the site when I tried to get to it, down in Northern Nicaragua. God only knows why? Anyway, I'm back in the States now, it's June, with a bunch of new insights, but, mostly, a sadness because one of my friends among friends, Dave Harmon, passed on in May, while I was still in Teote. Harmon introduced me to Teote back in 1993, selling a Third World/First World compassion trip to Nicaragua which changed my life. This blog is therefore dedicated to the memory of don David Harmon and others who gave their hearts and (some, their lives) to foster liberty and social justice in Northern Nicaragua. When I finally settle into Glenwood Springs once more, I'll be working to build a place of reflection in honor of don David up on Spring Valley Campus, CMC, where he helped students to empower themselves as global citizens for 25 years.

Gracias, don David! CenterDoug

Happy

How in the world am I going to get back to simple? Won't I be glad when I'm there! Or, will I? In less than three weeks, I'll be in Teote; I may be Internet-disconnected, save for a weekly trip to Jalapa on the chicken bus; I will certainly be rising with the sun and going to bed early and eating mostly rice, beans and tortillas, with plenty of chicken soup on the side. And lots of ketchup--they call it salsa, down there, but it's Heinz 57.

My gosh, my life's a complicated dynamo, these days: the global and local projects I've undertaken, the energetic way I'm getting my voice out, the writing projects, they've got whirlwinds beat by at least 60 miles an hour! Yikes! And I've built gravel paths through wilderness and marble paths through meadows and lasting paths of peace, on the ground in Colorado and in the mid-air, on the ObamaBlog. What a trip! Zip! It feels only weeks ago, I left for my life up here, instead of 8 full months. Time rips the sonic fabric when I'm happy.

Hello, CenterDoug

Goodness Gracious! Hello again to my beloved CD Blog. I'm about to get much more focused on Hello, my beloved Blogger Blog.

I'm back from my Obama-Work-Vacation, and will be more focused on this blog as I'm headed to Nicaragua on January 15th, as long as the planes are still flying. God knows any more what we can count on, except life, death, and taxes, and, for me, Barack Obama. My focus these days is very much in support of the Indigenous Peoples of the Western Hemisphere, including my family in Nicaragua. I'm co-coordinating a new Obama Community Group on MyBO tofurther communication in the States with all of Latin America and the Caribbean. Very wide ranging, with some superduperstar Obamabloggers signed on. It's hot, I'm excited, and this blog should be linking to all my other blogs about now through Intense Debate. I may end up an unofficial Ambassador to Nicaragua yet, just through my blogposts, anyway. I think I posted that early here: I applied to be appointed Nicaraguan Ambassador in Obama's Administration, and, while it is a cosmic longshot that this Cosmic Caballero would ever be considered, hey, WHY NOT? (said Robert Kennedy in 1968) and I've pretty much operated that way ever since. I could do some good there, but it would be a very different Embassy than what has ever been, for sure.
Gracias, CenterDoug

Ay Chihuahua!

So, strange. Only 32 days to Nicaragua, most out of Glenwood. Here's my happiest seasons greetings to all of you. CD

Navidad in Nicaragua

©Doug Evans 2008 (767 words)

For The Glenwood Post Independent (December)

Christmas Day starts early in Teotecacinte, Nicaragua, at least in my sister Marta’s casa de palomas, on the southern skirts of this peasant village where I spend my warmer winters. No sleeping-in is allowed, in Marta Betanco’s house, not even on Navidad. Except for me, of course, off in my cloistered wing: since I’m considered a North American angel of God down here, she grants me special license, at least on high holy days; she said, with a chuckle, last night, “Angels need their sleep, Dugla, particularly at Christmas, when they’re so very busy.”

My life is very sweet in Nicaragua.

Marta’s up at 3 am, probably, for an hour of prayer on her knees, after lighting the kitchen fire. The rest of the family gets rustled up by the mamacita at 4 am, to help her clean house (including washing the adobe walls of the sala and the kitchen stove with fresh, clean mud). Every inch of the dirt floors is swept by Estania, Marta’s daughter, with her handmade broom. In the kitchen, Marta’s steaming nacatamales in their banana leaf wrappers, poised in an iron kettle above a simmer for 5 hours. The water mustn’t boil off, or all-day-yesterday’s prep work will scorch, ruining the coming feast.

Cesar, the papa of the house, is scrounging firewood to keep the boil going. Even Arnoldo, the teenage son, has a duty: he’s gone fishing for tilapia in the rio Limon, hoping to catch a big one to give his grandmother on Christmas Day. I know all this is happening, of course, even from my sequestered spot, because Marta’s voice carries quite well in still-humid December. It’s now 9 am on Christmas Day in Teote. The only sound louder than her commands was the rooster “Hallelujah Chorus” at daybreak, 4:47, today, when I awoke. Even sleeping angels need to wake up sometime, I guess; it might as well be to crowing, for joy at the coming of light.

While all that’s going on in prep for the family feast at noon, I’m playing “Christmas Carols, ‘Round the World” on my laptop, stretching in the growing light, and being grateful for another day, especially this one, in my 64^th year. Time is very precious to me, and I make the most of it. The sound of Perry Como singing “Ave Maria” brings Marta to my door with café and “Feliz Navidad!” She’s picked a favorite coral rose as a special gift, this morning of mornings. We hug, then she scurries back, sure the nacatamales are burning. I look at the rose and know, once again, that my life is full of angels, right in front of me: it took Nicaragua to let me see that. It’s a gift I’ll carry with me, I hope, and live up to, as well.

With the swish of Estania’s broom and the tinkle of holiday laughter in the air for company, I head for my laptop and three hours of daily writing. Even on Christmas. Heck, because of Christmas! In a few hours, the whole extended family of Betancos will descend on la casa de palomas, 89 strong this year, counting all the new babies, and I’ll need to kiss my Christmas solitude “Good-Bye.” We’ll be decorating the chimbomba, the Christmas tree, this year a potted Norfolk Pine, my treat, brought all the way from Esteli by taxi, which we’ll plant in my garden at Tierra Mia after the 12 Days of Christmas are over. In the late afternoon, we’ll all troop to church for Christmas mass. We’ll vow to make each day a new beginning.

In Nicaragua, Christmas dances on for almost half a jolly month past the Christmas service, culminating in gift-giving, a multiplicity of hugs, another feast on the 12^th day, when the Wisemen arrived at the stable with their offerings. As Nicaraguans rarely have cash for gifts to emulate the Magi, love and handmade tokens take their place. It’s a time to honor babies, birth and parenthood, and every human life on the planet, a time for cherishing familia, not for shopping.

This year, I helped a friend fold 89 origami storks to pass out, then, hang from fishing line above my family’s beds and hammocks. I’ve been folding the first folds on and off since August, but I know they’ll be a triumph. I mean, they’re crimped by an angel from the States, after all; I even added sparkles with glitter, so they’ll twinkle in the Nicaraguan night.

Feliz Navidád, mi amigos en Glenwood Springs and all the international bloggers now my friends. CenterDoug

From Now On, Cultural Creatives: Us!

From this post on,
I will be refocusing this blog much more often on my daily life as a multicultural global citizen, triumphant in the USA and in Nicaragua, in the Now. I will be focusing my Obama Blog [http:www.my.barackobama.com (Obama Doug's Obama Blog)] on networking those who are interested in learning about the exploited and magnificent peoples of the "Land Bridge" between North and South America, the heartland of the Western Hemisphere, Central America, from South Mexico to Nicaragua.

This Blog, CenterDoug, will focus on furthering understanding, mostly for myself, on the current paradigm shift we undergo presently.

Gracias, CenterDoug

A Shift Towards Compassion

A shift towards compassion:

I’ve been playing with the concept, for a while, of the “Paradigm Shift,” primarily a rise to higher collective consciousness, accompanying our movement from a 20^th century “Old America” to a 21^st century entity I’m calling “New America,” a very transformative, millennial vision that’s still mostly perfumed air and dreams, right now, that I’m seeing only in tantalizing, ghostly shimmers. Admittedly, I live and think and act from the very-most fringe of contemporary being. But, right now, most everything out there seems to have turned inside-out, to me: so maybe, just maybe, the fringe has become, at least for a moment, the epicenter of synergy. Certainly, questioning looks better all the time, at every level.

We’re in a very transitional Transition, at the very least from a current President to a bright-shiny new one. Everything is transitioning, let us hope, with grace. We may, as well, be in the midst of a tsunami of a Consciousness Shift—Blip!--leaving everything (including, by the way, each of us!) looking somehow different, as from a never-seen-before perspective, while staying almost exactly the same.

Imagine it: Something uniquely new, that isn’t just another expensive toy!

And, I’ll tell you what. I feel it’s already happened.

Does it not feel to you as if everything’s somehow gone inside-out? Gone topsy-turvy? Turned upside-down? And, all the while, everything has, yet again, stayed the same? That’s the way I felt when I faced third world poverty and starvation in Nicaragua, in 1993, as an “entitled American” with spiritual issues. Things happen when we’re ready for them, even if we don’t know it. Back then, I suddenly became very grateful for what I’d taken for granted before and found a pair of global shoes to fill. Now, that somersaulting sense, intuitively, signs the Collective Shift that most Cultural Creatives (Paul Ray, The Cultural Creatives) have been awaiting and working on in their millions of private American lives, since the 1980’s: that moment when “enough” people are living their lives as conscious, grateful, global people, being the change they want to see, from every level of the warp and woof of both our American tapestry and the rest of the globe’s people.

Life’s a test we’re always ready for, if we’d only listen, from the inside-out.

It might be true (but, who knows what’s true, when everything is somehow different?) that those who’ve relied on institutions to save them, even from themselves, might be a bit panicked right now, since not much is working “rightly” out there, except, perhaps, the promise of Obama and continued American ingenuity; some might be afraid to do their own thinking for a change. In my estimation, self-responsibility is still rather new a concept in America, since we tend to forget to include responsibility for others in the equation. We might all be wise to take our lives reasonably lightly, right now, held in hands of love and gratitude, honoring the current craziness with the salsa of humor and a juggernaut of compassion for our brothers and sisters, some of whom might be cracking up, under the strain, right now, of tribulation.

We’re going through an evolutionary shift in thinking, together, even if we do not know it. Those who do know it might choose to serve others, right now, at least with a compassionate ear. It’s all up to each of us, right now, after all, as it’s almost always been, but, maybe, more of us know it.

We voted for change, and it looks like we’re going to get it. We might as well welcome it, then, grow and prosper.

Gracias, CenterDoug

I Can't Believe It's Almost December!

I'm here in Aurora,
with my daughter Melissa and her family, so life is sweet and millennial in my life. In retrospect, I certainly have been travelling, in and out, on the other side of the paradigm shift, and I certainly have had fun imagining in virtual reality quite a few interesting possibilities. Still, it's about time to pack for my return to Nicaragua in the middle of January, so I better get crackin'. I still have a 64th birthday to celebrate with my Current Lover, Christmas in 12 different places in Colorado, New Year's resolutions, 2 Grandson Birthdays: Ay, Ay, Ay! When will I have time to pack with all this birthing to party over? It always feels to me that this turn to January is a good time for forgiving the old ways and embracing new beginnings, but this year I've nothing I need to forgive: I've been celebrating newness in my life for a year! Season's Greetings to all, from this old codger, the artful dodger!
Gracias, CenterDoug

Down is Up in Obama-Land

"Down is Up in Obama-Land"

BALANCING THE TENSION OF THE OPPOSITES WORKS: Here’s how the Universe probably works: all things exist in tension with their opposites in an exquisite balance that can be intuited but not measured. The Universe is both expanding and contracting, all at once, a crazy paradox, of course, because the essence of the Universe is paradoxical mystery. Light is both a wave and a particle, physicists say, exerting characteristics of both in a seemingly impossible way: its essence is the tension between these opposing states of being. Get it? Another example: We are both living and dying in every minute: the quality of our living and dying depends on the way we hold the tension of these opposite states within our personalities. If we see ourselves as dying every minute (which we are) we live a different life than one who sees himself as living every minute (which we are). The most transcendent approach: to recognize that both states are true in every minute, then to be grateful for the energy this paradoxical tension develops in our understanding of who we are.

“So what?” say my Earth-bound friends; “Of course!” say my cosmic-flyer-cohorts. Somewhere in between the two is a space where I’m both grounded and flying at once: to me, this is the miraculous moment, the NOW, where all things and their opposites are One.

THE MARKET MELTDOWN: So, now we have the Market’s falling spiral, and we know from the above, when something’s falling, there must be something intrinsically connected to it that’s rising as well: Let’s look at that intuitively for a minute. What immediately comes to mind is TRUST/DISTRUST in this economic issue. The Market’s fall marks the lowering levels of investor trust, individually, then collectively, in our economic system: It continues to deepen and re-create itself in negatively-synergistic ways. We no longer trust that “business as usual” works.

But, then, if trust is falling into distrust there, where is distrust spiraling upwards into trust, in my life and in the life of the collective American spirit? A very important question. When I listen for an answer to that question, what bubbles up with truth-shining is “my own inner trust.” How rare and right that is, for me, at least. In the last three months of activism for President-Elect Obama, I’ve come to a flowering of my own formerly-wounded spirit. I’d chosen to be too disaffected in my native land. Now, I feel I’m busting out with purple (red + white + blue) roses! I can almost smell their musky scent, wafting up within me.

I’ve come to trust myself, my balanced mind and heart, my instincts, my microcosm dancing within the macrocosm of America: the key here, though, is not me, though I do believe in growing, but that this flowering evolved from my active participation and dance with the collective, rather than just within myself: in this blog; upfront in people’s faces; on doorsteps and sidewalks and out to the streets of Glenwood, a tango-fest in the face of oncoming rush hour traffic, the day before Election Day’s Victory, a jitter-bugging fool with my Obama/Biden yard sign. Hoo-Hah!

THRILLING STORIES: I’ll bet every active Obama supporter can write a similar story. I’ve read many of them on MyBO and www.change.gov. They thrill me, these stories of personal growth from active service in a mutually beneficial world. Our individually-rising trust in ourselves as worthy and functional, walking our talk, changing our world, being the change we want to see, has raised not only the collective self-esteem of Americans, even of both Parties, but the esteem of the enthralled billions globally as well, who rejoice with us in Obama’s—and Our--victory. We’ve become a stronger people as a result of this election and our participation in it. I’m grateful. I can hardly tell you how proud I am to be an American, on the cresting wave of the future.

The world’s a stronger world, as well, from the gift of hope in affirmative change that we all inspired, this mindful mandate, signaling American maturity to the planet. None of us need to be reminded of why the world has rarely if ever thought of our electorate or our politicians or our culture as being mindful, but it surely does now. I’m mindful; most of you are mindful; we all are more mindful because we’ve been trusting in and observing a very mindful leader, such an honorable man, with remarkable self-esteem. We're reflecting him like shiny candles in multiplying mirrors of wonder! This bodes well for the state of America and all humanity.

We have much reason to be humbly proud.

MARKET IS DOWN, SERVICE IS UP: Thus, as trust in the economic systems falls, we find ourselves, even in the face of all that paper collapsing, trusting in ourselves to survive, to create, to share with our brothers, to love, to link ourselves together for affirmative change. We want to keep our passionate hearts open. “Coloradans for Obama” has moved on from the election to filling food banks across the state with a mouse-click, to feed our hungering people, as well as continued networking for Obama. 100,000 meals have been raised in the first two weeks! That’s inspiring, and only one miracle among millions occurring among us now, at the grassroots level, in the very fertile soil of our linkage. We’ve learned we can work transforming miracles of--Let's name it!--grace, through mutually-beneficial service. I truly believe that America’s gearing up for blooming, regardless of the rotten garbage out there. Blooming out of “business as usual,” service linkage is emerging, and a breathtaking garden begins to evolve, even if it still has some prickers. Who wants a rose garden, without the thorns? How boring!

OUR FUTURE IS RAINBOW: What our “new” way of doing business will look like is anybody’s guess--it could come down and up to barter, as in Nicaragua, or to federally-linked service, here and abroad that serves the world mutually, also with a mouse-click--or a more meaningful life. Of course, I have a guess, too. We’re each responsible for its evolution in our individual, transformed ways, but our linkage synergizes our personal ways together: mutual service to our fellow human beings will most likely be its foundation; electronic linkage its probable engine; and rising self-esteem (and gratitude for it), its synchronizing energy.

Dynamo!

Service linkage builds new work and meaningful jobs that both matter and pay. Let's "follow our bliss" (Campbell) into the rainbow garden of American life.

While President-Elect Obama is our most visible miracle worker, it is all of us who'll make his miracles happen, as we did in retaking our nation. We may send our prayers and hopes to lift up Obama, but let's take our highest expectations for change upon ourselves.

Come on, now, Obama-bloggers, smell the sweet and sexy scent! It’s not all bad out there; we’re blooming like rainbow-roses, all over Obama-Land.

We did it once; we can flower again and again: Yes, We Can! Yes, We Will!

President Obama, for 8 Great Years!

Gracias, CenterDoug