Tax Day Special – Two Minute Activism

Posted on April 15, 2010 by beckyajohnson

Today I was invited to talk about Bread for the World, an organization I have been involved with for about two years, at a potluck for seniors at my church. Yes, all the essential ingredients of a church potluck were there. Casseroles – check. Jello salad with chopped up fruit – check. 10:1 dessert to other edible item ratio – check. But that aside, I was there to talk about renewing policies to help hungry and poor people in the United States.

I like Bread for the World because they are about more than addressing the immediate needs of hungry and poor people – like soup kitchens, food pantries and the like. The are about changing policies that address the root causes of poverty and hunger – policies that, if implemented, will help people to become self-sufficient rather than dependent on welfare programs.

Each year Bread for the World does an Offering of Letters, encouraging people to write handwritten letters to members of Congress on an issue that helps to address ending hunger and poverty in the United States and abroad. This year’s issue: as part of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, certain tax codes were put in place to expand the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit to help lift working families above the poverty level. These credits are due to expire this year unless further action is taken.

Coincidentally, my presentation to the potluck coincided with Tax Day, and a major week of advocacy for Bread for the World. There are 2 quick ways you can make a difference.

1. This week, by 5 pm EST on April 16th, call your Senators and Representatives and urge them to protect and strengthen the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit. You can be connected to your members of Congress by calling the Capitol switchboard at 1-800-826-3688.

2. Beyond this week, you can write a handwritten letter to your members of Congress to address this issue. Sample letters and key talking points may be found at www.offeringofletters.org.

If these tax credits are not renewed, 7 million low-income people could lose the Earned Income Tax Credit and 6 million children could lose the Child Tax Credit. This would force more than 1.5 million people, including nearly 800,000 children, back into poverty. It only takes a few minutes to make a phone call or write a letter, but it could make a huge difference!

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Topless Vampires? Only in Vegas

Posted on April 6, 2010 by beckyajohnson

Although I live in Las Vegas, I rarely get out and do touristy activities around the Las Vegas Strip. Normally, I only visit this famous Las Vegas street when we have visitors from out of town, which was the case this past weekend. With my husband’s cousin and BFF staying at the Stratosphere Casino, they had access to half-price tickets for the topless vampire review show BITE. With regular-price tickets at $50 bucks a pop, $25 tickets for a Las Vegas show are a complete steal.

Topless vampires you may think? In Vegas we already have X-rated pirates and a naughty hypnotist, and aren’t vampires also sexy? I read a review of the show in advance in the Las Vegas Review Journal, which gave the show a “C,” so my expectations weren’t very high. I also read that audience participation is part of the show, and since I hate audience participation, I made sure to eat lots of honey-garlic chicken wings for dinner just before the show so as to be undesirable and ward off the curse of the vampire.

The show’s half-dozen vampires dance to a mix of 80s rock music, and with their unsynchronized choreography we wondered if they were (a) A-rated Vegas show rejects, (b) second-string BITE dancers on-board to replace the main dancers who had been given Easter off to spend time with their families, or if (c) they too had enjoyed the bottomless happy hour at the Stratosphere’s C-Bar prior to the show. In this age of implants and plastic surgery (especially in Vegas), I was however pleased to see that most, if not all, of the dancers still had their real boobies in tact.

It was a good thing that I was not selected for the audience participation piece, because unlike the girl who was ultimately selected to be the creepy Lord Vampire’s bride, I had forgotten to wear an easy-to-rip-off Velcro dress with matching bikini underneath. Men attending the show should be wary as well. The man they picked from the audience to entertain the topless vampires was required to do acrobatics from a hanging rope Cirque du Soleil style. Alternatively, one could sing cheesy 80s songs like ‘Come Sail Away,’ while the topless vampires do interpretative dances behind you.

Although some people in our party wanted to walk out of the show due to the huge cheese factor, the show was very stereotypical Vegasy and I think it was worth the $25 ticket (but not the full $50). To enjoy the show to the fullest possible extent, do check out the bottomless happy hour inside the Stratosphere from 4 – 8 pm daily, even though you may regret it the next morning.

To read an alternative review of the show, check out my husband’s blog here.

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Global Mission Lenten Soup Supper

Posted on March 24, 2010 by beckyajohnson

Every year during Lent my home church, Good Samaritan Lutheran Church in Las Vegas, hosts Wednesday evening simple soup suppers followed by a short service. For the past four years, my church’s global mission team, of which I am a part, has added a ‘global twist’ one Wednesday out of the year, featuring ethnically inspired soups and using the event as an opportunity to generate awareness of issues happening around the world.

This year’s line-up included Chilean Cazuela (a chicken & vegetable soup), Indian Lentil Soup, Split Pea Soup with exotic spices, and the familiar chicken noodle soup. My contribution, the Chilean Cazuela, was taken from the 2010 Global Mission Lenten Series website, coordinated annually by ELCA Global Mission, which lifts up a different country each week.

Week Four’s Chilean Cazuela recipe was simple, yet delicious, but a bit difficult to follow because there was some uncertainty as to the portions of each ingredient. Also, I didn’t have the patience to cut corn-on-the-cob into two-inch slices, nor cook the rice separately. Here’s my version of the recipe, which yields around 25 modest servings. You can adapt accordingly to fit any size crowd:

2 3/4 pounds sustainably farmed, free-range, grass fed chicken thighs, cut into bite sized pieces

2 whole butternut squash, peeled and cut into bite-size cubes

6 large russet potatoes, peeled and cut into bite-size cubes

7 carrots, peeled and sliced

2 11-oz. cans of corn

3 32-oz. boxes of low sodium free range chicken broth

1/2 cup uncooked rice

Salt and pepper to taste

Minced cilantro

Hot pepper sauce

Throw all of the ingredients, except for the cilantro and hot pepper sauce, into a large soup kettle, preferably at least 10 quarts in size. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 25 minutes. Add a pinch of the minced cilantro and apply the hot pepper sauce liberally before serving.

The original recipe on the ELCA Global Mission website was the contribution of Karen Anderson, who serves with ELCA Global Mission in Chile to support and improve the health and well-being of women and children. As at this year’s event, we raised funds for ELCA World Hunger Appeal, I found this quote from Karen especially important:

“We know now that the intolerable hunger in the world is not due to scarcity – it is a question of justice and sharing. For the first time in history, our generation has the tools, technology, and resources to end hunger and extreme poverty – yet we lack the political will. If people would share there would be enough to go around for the more than 1.4 billion people living on less than US$1.25 a day – the majority of whom are women.”

 

At the dinner we also sold fair trade coffee, tea and chocolate from Equal Exchange, which we buy in bulk through Lutheran World Relief. Buying fair trade is not much more expensive than buying conventional products, helps farmers in developing countries to earn an income for themselves that is not possible with the intervention of middle-men in the non-fair trade process, and promotes fair wages, children’s rights, women’s rights, the right to organize, environmental rights, and indigenous rights.

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Foods that Heal

Posted on March 19, 2010 by beckyajohnson

In honor of National Nutrition Month, St. Rose Hospitals in southern Nevada were offering free healthy eating classes. This morning I took a class at the San Martin campus on ‘Foods that Heal.’ The course was taught by master herbalist and holistic health educator Nicole Carter, who teaches a variety of healthy lifestyle courses throughout the Vegas valley. To also put in a plug for the classes offered through St. Rose’s Barbara Greenspun Womens Care Centers of Excellence, not only was my class today free, but it also included a free healthy and vegan-friendly lunch. Most of their classes that do charge are at a minimal fee.

The purpose of the class was to learn about “common foods and not so common foods that have interesting health benefits.” Featured food items were flax seeds, coconuts, chia seeds (yes they do come from the same plants that make chia pets), walnuts, pineapples, pomegranates, cranberries, almonds, carob, avocados, and aloe vera. In a country where the main staples of our diet have shifted to soybeans, wheat, high fructose corn syrup and other genetically modified remnants of the corn crop, and highy processed foods, it was refreshing to learn that maybe our ancestors were on to something when they ate basic, high-quality plant-based food products that contain all of the nutrients our bodies need to sustain themselves.

For example, did you know that coconut water is an excellent all-natural sports drink without the added sugar, and it is a good option for someone who is fasting? Fresh pineapple may be rubbed on the face to prevent wrinkles, and forget expensive store-brand 100% cranberry juice – you can make your own for super cheap with frozen cranberries, water and stevia. Interestingly, an avocado takes 9 months to grow (and looks curiously similar to a uterus), and it is one of the most healthy foods for women’s health and during pregnancy.

If you visit Nicole Carter’s website, www.herbalexperience.net, you can find a list of her upcoming classes and events. One can also join the Herbalist Club, where you get a one-year herb of the month subscription complete with recipes and DIY kit, online access to videos and podcasts, and membership in the Las Vegas Herb Co-operative, including 40% discounts on their products. This is good for someone like me, who is terrible at growing plants. Why not have someone else do it for me?

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Movie Review: The Last Station

Posted on March 9, 2010 by beckyajohnson

As someone who is a huge fan of the writings of Leo Tolstoy – I can boast that I have read both Anna Karenina and War and Peace, as well as some of his later writings on Christian anarchism and nonviolent resistance – I was excited to learn that a movie had been made about the last year of his life. While searching for movie theatres and show times on Yahoo Movies, I was shocked to learn that the movie only grossed $130,813 at the U.S. Box Office. How could a movie about a great writer and philosopher who influenced the work of both Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., dwindle in comparison to a movie about blue men in trees?

Set in 1910, the movie depicts 2 simultaneous love stories – the falling apart marriage of Leo Nikolayevich (Christopher Plummer) and Sofya Andreyevna (Helen Mirren), and the blossoming relationship of Tolstoy’s secretary, Valentin Bulgakov (James McAvoy) and another Tolstoyan follower, Masha. Leo Tolstoy’s views on the rights to own property, poverty, and chastity differ greatly from his materialistic wife’s views, which results in frequent quarrels and Sofya’s repeated attempts at suicide. To add to this, Tolstoy’s most devoted disciple, Vladimir Chertkov (Paul Giamatti), is hastening the process of Tolstoy developing a new will to leave his immense fortune and the rights to his work to the Russian people, rather than his wife and 13 children.

The young virgin, Bulgakov, struggles living at the Telyatinki commune, with a beautiful woman, Masha. According to the teachings of Tolstoy, sexual abstinence is the ideal, although Tolstoy also wrote that the central tenet of Christianity and all world religions is love.

Fortunately, I read Jay Parini’s novel The Last Station prior to watching the movie, because the movie was a bit disappointing. Reflective of the failings of The Passion of the Christ, the movie portrays the long road to death, and says little about the teachings of the person dying. While the multiple first person narrative of the book (based on several actual diaries of the people most close to him) tells the story of Tolstoy’s final year and his quest to continue his work and philosophizing up until the very end, the movie is barely more than a love-story and a battle over his will, and only really develops two of the main characters from the book. Surprisingly, neither of these is Leo Tolstoy himself.

So while I wouldn’t necessarily encourage everyone to run out and see this movie while it is still in the cinemas, Jay Parini’s novel is worth a read. The crazy musings of Tolstoy’s wife, the eager-to-please attitude of his secretary Bulgakov, the lesbian leanings of his daughter Sasha, and the obsessiveness of his Dr. Dushan to document everything Tolstoy says in a small notebook, are intertwined with excerpts from Tolstoy’s diary entries, letters to Gandhi and George Bernard Shaw, and writings from his later years.

To close with an excerpt from Tolstoy’s non-fiction work What Then Must We Do?, which is also featured in the novel and shows Tolstoy’s devout beliefs against violence of any form and structures that create poverty:

Thirty years ago, in Paris, I once saw how, in the presence of thousands of spectators, they cut a man’s head off with a guillotine. I knew he was a horrible criminal, and I knew all the arguments written in defense of that kind of action. I also knew his crime was done deliberately and intentionally. But at the moment the head and the body separated, with the head toppling into the box, I gasped and realized not with my mind but with my heart and my whole soul that all the arguments in favor of capital punishment are wicked nonsense and that however many people may combine to commit murder – the worst of all crimes – and whatever they may call themselves, murder remains murder. I knew that a crime had been committed before my eyes, and that I, by my very presence and nonintervention, had approved and shared in that crime.

In the same way now, at the sight of the hunger, cold, and degradation of thousands of people, I understood not only with my mind or heart but with my very soul that the existence of tens of thousands of such people in Moscow – while I and thousands of others gorge ourselves on beefsteaks and sturgeon and cover our horses and floors with cloth or carpets – no matter what all the learned men in the world may say about its necessity, is a crime, and one committed not once but constantly. I knew that I, with my luxury, shared fully the responsibility for this crime.

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