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General News    H4'ed 5/17/13

Weaving People and Communities Together: The Joyfully Painful Labors of Lillian Lake

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Lillian is deeply active in politics. In Augusta, Maine on 4/24/13, she addressed Senator Jackson, Representative Dill, and honorable members of the Maine Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry Joint Standing Committee (4):

Thank you for the opportunity to present testimony in support of LD718 (Maine GMO Labeling Bill)

As a social activist and lifelong resident of Maine, I have fought for social justice on many levels. Maine's proposed GMO labeling bill isn't "just" a labeling bill.  It is a human rights bill. It provides for the right for us to know what's in our food; what foods we put in our body; and have food that is culturally and nutritionally sound. It's a step, not a solution to a larger problem. Biotechnology has prolific representation in Washington. This bill helps level the playing field, allowing consumers to vote three times a day with their forks. It is policy that does not discriminate in regard to income or culture.  Maine's Senators and Representatives have a responsibility to provide that opportunity. You know your job is not to decide whether GMO's are bad or good, but to allow Maine's citizens to make that choice independently; labeling is one means of fostering that independence. You must be the people's representative.

She further states

Maine's proposed GMO labeling bill isn't "just" a labeling bill. It is a human rights bill. It provides for the right for us to know what's in our food; what foods we put in our body; and have food that is culturally and nutritionally sound.

Lillian's ultimate work is to weave people and ideas into a community vision. She does this by linking resources and people in towns such as Farmington, Maine and creates what in marketing is called a "brand."

Like Mother like Daughter.

Lillian states she brings people together to make communities look like what the people in the community want it to look like. This sounds a lot different than some developer developing a standardized communty based on his ideals and projected profit! Furthermore, this smacks the face of those die-hards that believe in evolution as requiring competition and survival of the fittest. While competition does indeed occur in Nature, perhaps the ecological systems as a whole are more community like. For example, if one looks at the relationship of ants to anteaters, the anteaters help to maintain the population of the ants which then reduces the risk of the ants eating themselves out of house and home.

Evolution appears to occur for the good of the whole ecosystem. Those species that thrive contribute as much as they take. Even predators keep their prey species strong, control overpopulation and reproduction of the weak, and eventually poop in the woods, spreading seeds and enriching soil with their droppings. Symbiosis, (sym=together, bio=living) is much more prevalent than competition in Nature. Each symbiont serves the other. The bacteria that live in nodules on the roots of beans and peas are being nourished by the plants but are also nitrogen-fixing agents that enable strong plant growth, flowering, and fruiting. Cleaner fish feed off of their larger host fish and keep them healthy. Gardeners function in symbiosis with the flowering, fruiting, and seeding plants in their gardens. Bees may join them in a three-way mutually beneficial society. Yes we eat the plant products we nurture; but we also seed, water, and weed them, harvesting their seeds to plant again next year. Yes, bees occasionally sting; but bees give us honey and wax, and they propagate the plants whose nectar they suck. (The word "symbiosis" was used to describe human social interactions long before it was used by botonists and biologists. We are returning now to this understanding of human participation in natural process.)

Nature's way is to support diversity from the bottom up. Liilian mimics nature by organizing from the bottom up. She is not one to idolize a top down community developer building malls and standardized subdivisions. Like Lillian, Nature is not a Goddess directing things from on high. She works from inside out, from center to periphery. This is how a fetus develops, it is how the Earth develops and it is how the universe evolves. And where is this center? Wherever you are. The central hub of the universe is such that its location is everywhere and its periphery nowhere.

The Sun truly is not....yet is....the center of the universe. You and I are as much the center of the universe as the Sun is, though we be miles apart.

Could Lillian's style be tapping into a natural way of community development...from center to periphery, from inside out? I think so. Perhaps hers is the way of the future! Wall Street shall no longer be deemed Capital of the World!

What are communities if not cells talking to each other? "Hey, we need a brain cell! Thus the need is called out and is met in the developing body of a fetus. Is the Earth any different in how Her parts interact for the sake of the functioning whole? Everything works for the sake of everything else.

Could Lillian be onto something so earthly natural and yet so cosmically grand?

Lillian furthermore focuses more on cooperation between businesses than competition. Sharing is integral to community survival. So are ecosystems as per the Gaia Hypothesis (not the capitalistic theory presented as Darwin's). There are some deep ecologists that believe ancient tribal socieites were overall more eqitable and cooperative in their approach to living. Others believe differently. According to some espousing Darwinian theory, competition is about survival of the fittest and thus is a primary factor in evolution. Does "fittest" mean strongest and largest, or does it mean best able to fit into the community productively?

Let's take a quick look. According to Wikapedia,

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Burl Hall is a retired counselor who is living in a Senior Citizen Housing apartment. Burl has one book to his credit, titled "Sophia's Web: A Passionate Call to Heal our Wounded Nature." For more information, search the book on Amazon. (more...)
 
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