Let all women take note...let us pray for her safe return....let us also follow in her courageous foot steps with such conviction; marching to the truth.

these guys are hilarious....check them out...

this is just so unreal....

There will be Peace one day......the question is, when will we have the courage to be that Peace.

anyone seen this film?

check this out....see you in Washington DC.!   
http://www.turtlewomenrising.com/john-lennon.php

this is long...but so important...and so fundamental to understand.....if you have time...i strongly advise watching this.

COME TO THE ANN ARBOR RALLY FOR THE RIGHT TO KNOW!

Saturday, March 26 · 12:00pm - 3:00pm · Southeast corner of Catherine Street and N. 4th Avenue - just south of the A2 Farmers Market and Kerrytown Shops
We will be out in force to let the world know that we all deserve to know what's in our Food and that Genetically Modified Foods need to be labeled!! Everyone in the Ann Arbor area who cares about this issue should show up along with any friends or family.



Campaign Resources: http://www.organicconsumers.org/monsanto/downloads.cfm

Go Valerie....you have my admiration.

First Nations launch blue-ribbon campaign to protect Great Lakes    http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/March2011/22/c5271.html

UOI OFFICES, March 22 /CNW/ - First Nations across Ontario chose World Water Week to launch a light blue ribbon campaign.  And if plans proceed this spring to ship nuclear waste through the Great Lakes watershed, those decorative pins could become battle ribbons.
"The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission and Bruce Power Corporation claim that First Nations were sufficiently consulted, but my community was never consulted," said Southwest Regional Anishinabek Nation Chief Chris Plain, who presented concerns about the proposed nuclear waste shipment to the Ministry of Natural Resources Standing Committee in Ottawa on March 10. "In fact, I know most of the Chiefs and Councils who are signatories to treaties all along the Great Lakes were never consulted. The duty to consult and accommodate must be done with the rights holders and we were never consulted."
Grand Council Chief Patrick Madahbee says that the Anishinabek Nation will be challenging the decision of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.
"We will do everything in our power to prevent the Ontario and Federal governments and the nuclear power industry from using our precious waterways as a garbage disposal route," said Madahbee, who added that Bruce Power's plan would be breaching the rule of law.
"It is contrary to Supreme Court decisions, our aboriginal and treaty rights, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the laws of Nature," said the Grand Council Chief, speaking on behalf of 39 member communities of the Anishinabek Nation which occupy all of the Great Lakes shoreline and a significant part of its basin.
The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples says that States must take effective measures to ensure that no storage or disposal of hazardous materials shall take place in the lands or territories of Indigenous peoples without their free, prior, and informed consent.  It also affirms the right of Indigenous peoples to conserve and protect the environment and productive capacity of their territories.
"The Anishinabek, Mushkegowuk, and Onkwehonwe peoples have made clear their relationship, rights, and responsibilities to the lands and waters, which are drawn from sacred law and traditional law," Madahbee added. "We need to protect the lands, waters and all living entities for seven generations to come."
The United Nations reports that more than one billion people around the world lack access to safe drinking water, including over 100 First Nation communities in Canada. Globally, two million tons of sewage and industrial and agricultural waste are poured into the world's waters every day, and at least 1.8 million children under five years of age die every year from water-related diseases, or one every 20 seconds. More people die as a result of polluted water than are killed by all forms of violence, including wars.
The Anishinabek Nation established the Union of Ontario Indians as its secretariat in 1949.  The UOI is a political advocate for 39 member communities across Ontario, representing approximately 55,000 people.  The Union of Ontario Indians is the oldest political organization in Ontario and can trace its roots back to the Confederacy of Three Fires, which existed long before European contact.

For further information: Marci Becking
Communications Officer
Union of Ontario Indians
Phone: (705) 497-9127 (ext. 2290)
Cell:  (705) 494-0735
E-mail: becmar@anishinabek.ca
Follow AnishNation on Twitter
Join the Anishinabek Nation Facebook Fan Page

The Conservative Media: HHS students rising above intolerant history of community

The Conservative Media: HHS students rising above intolerant history of community

March 22, 2011
Today is World Water Day: Stand Up for the Human Right to WaterTake Action to Stop Water Privatization Around the World!
Stand With People Across the Globe on World Water Day
Take Action to Stop Water Privatization Around the World
We're currently in a water crisis. You and I may not see the effects of it on a daily basis, but one out of six people worldwide don't have access to clean water. At the same time, multi-national corporations are in a race to control as much of this precious resource as possible. Stand with us this World Water Day and sign our petition against international water privatization.
The story has been the same all over the world: international financial institutions push water privatization as a requirement of loans for developing countries, which leads to less access to water for the poor, extremely high tariffs and poor water quality. A few years ago, Bolivia was just one of the many countries where multi-national corporations such as Bechtel, Suez, Veolia and Thames Water saw profit opportunities.


In Cochabamba, Bolivia the resulting mismanagement of water systems by Bechtel sparked a citizens' uprising to reclaim their water systems. In 2000, they were able to throw out Bechtel and put in new reforms and new political leaders to keep the water in the hands of the people. Take action to stand with people all over the world to end water privatization.
Now Bolivian President Evo Morales is introducing a resolution at the United Nations, calling for an end to the sale of public water resources to private corporations around the world. We support this resolution, and support community driven solutions that will protect water as a human right.
Take action this World Water Day to stand with the people all over the world to denounce private water companies that have deprived people of their human right to water in the name of profit:

http://action.foodandwaterwatch.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=6241






















Thanks for taking action,














Wenonah Hauter


Executive Director


Food & Water Watch


cleanwater(at)fwwatch(dot)org

http://www.organicconsumers.org/

World Against Monsanto: Anti-GMO Resistance
#268, March 17, 2011
Quote of the Week - World Against Monsanto: Anti-GMO Resistance

Action of the Week: Ask Your Grocer to Stop Selling Unlabeled Genetically Engineered Food


Alerts of the Week:


Stop the Plot to Use GMOs to Spur Superweeds & Sell Pesticides


Boycott Morningstar Farms, Kashi, Bear Naked, and Gardenburger!


Truth-in-Labeling Update: March 26, 2011 - Rally for the Right to Know!


Audio Conversation of the Week: Ronnie Cummins and Mike Adams


Remember to Take Action...

What if you lived by the largest body of fresh water in the world but could no longer afford to use it?”

So begins Liz Miller‚ captivating documentary, The Water Front,which follows one community‚ fight to retain public control of itswater and keep this basic resource affordable for everyone.
Set in Highland Park, Michigan, The Water Front begins with the community‚ descent into a fiscal crisis after the once prevalent auto industry leaves town. Facing economic collapse, a financial consultant team is hired to pull the town out of crisis. The team turns to the town‚ water system as a source of economic recuperation. The result is exorbitant water bills in a community with few resources to meet the astonishing charges. The community goes from disbelief to activism and a small group of determined community leaders emerge –with help from Food & Water Watch — to defend their basic human right for affordable and accessible water.
See The Water Front and witness the birth of a local water justice movement.

http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/water/films/the-water-front/

THE PEOPLE ARE SPEAKING.....................TRUTH TO POWER !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ROCKING SPEECH....THIS IS OVER THE TOP...WAY TO SAY DENNIS... AREAL AMERICAN HERO...AT YOUR SERVICE/

Power Concedes Nothing Without a Demand

Chris Hedges | Monday 14 March 2011

The liberal class is discovering what happens when you tolerate the intolerant. Let hate speech pollute the airways. Let corporations buy up your courts and state and federal legislative bodies. Let the Christian religion be manipulated by charlatans to demonize Muslims, gays and intellectuals, discredit science and become a source of personal enrichment. Let unions wither under corporate assault. Let social services and public education be stripped of funding. Let Wall Street loot the national treasury with impunity. Let sleazy con artists use lies and deception to carry out unethical sting operations on tottering liberal institutions, and you roll out the welcome mat for fascism.

The liberal class has busied itself with the toothless pursuits of inclusiveness, multiculturalism, identity politics and tolerance—a word Martin Luther King never used—and forgotten about justice. It naively sought to placate ideological and corporate forces bent on the destruction of the democratic state. The liberal class, like the misguided democrats in the former Yugoslavia or the hapless aristocrats in the Weimar Republic, invited the wolf into the henhouse. The liberal class forgot that, as Karl Popper wrote in “The Open Society and Its Enemies,” “If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.”

Workers in this country paid for their rights by suffering brutal beatings, mass expulsions from company housing and jobs, crippling strikes, targeted assassinations of union leaders and armed battles with hired gun thugs and state militias. The Rockefellers, the Mellons, the Carnegies and the Morgans—the Koch Brothers Industries, Goldman Sachs and Wal-Mart of their day—never gave a damn about workers. All they cared about was profit. The eight-hour workday, the minimum wage, Social Security, pensions, job safety, paid vacations, retirement benefits and health insurance were achieved because hundreds of thousands of workers physically fought a system of capitalist exploitation. They rallied around radicals such as “Mother” Jones, United Mine Workers’ President John L. Lewis and “Big” Bill Haywood and his Wobblies as well as the socialist presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs.

Lewis said, “I have pleaded your case from the pulpit and from the public platform—not in the quavering tones of a feeble mendicant asking alms, but in the thundering voice of the captain of a mighty host, demanding the rights to which free men are entitled.”

Those who fought to achieve these rights endured tremendous suffering, pain and deprivation. It is they who made possible our middle class and opened up our democracy. The elite hired goons and criminal militias to evict striking miners from company houses, infiltrate fledgling union organizations and murder suspected union leaders and sympathizers. Federal marshals, state militias, sheriff’s deputies and at times Army troops, along with the courts and legislative bodies, were repeatedly used to crush and stymie worker revolts. Striking sugar cane workers were gunned down in Thibodaux, La., in 1887. Steel workers were shot to death in 1892 in Homestead, Pa. Railroad workers in the Pullman strike of 1894 were murdered. Coal miners at Ludlow, Colo., in 1914 and at Matewan, W.Va., in 1920 were massacred. Our freedoms and rights were paid for with their courage and blood.

American democracy arose because those consciously locked out of the system put their bodies on the line and demanded justice. The exclusion of the poor and the working class from the systems of power in this country was deliberate. The Founding Fathers deeply feared popular democracy. They rigged the system to favor the elite from the start, something that has been largely whitewashed in public schools and by a corporate media that has effectively substituted myth for history. Europe’s poor, fleeing to America from squalid slums and workhouses in the 17th and 18th centuries, were viewed by the privileged as commodities to exploit. Slaves, Native Americans, indentured servants, women, and men without property were not represented at the Constitutional Conventions. And American history, as Howard Zinn illustrated in “The People’s History of the United States,” is one long fight by the marginalized and disenfranchised for dignity and freedom. Those who fought understood the innate cruelty of capitalism.

Truthout needs your help to sustain groundbreaking, independent journalism in 2011. Make a tax-deductible contribution now by clicking here.

“When you sell your product, you retain your person,” said a tract published in the 1880s during the Lowell, Mass., mill strikes. “But when you sell your labour, you sell yourself, losing the rights of free men and becoming vassals of mammoth establishments of a monied aristocracy that threatens annihilation to anyone who questions their right to enslave and oppress. Those who work in the mills ought to own them, not have the status of machines ruled by private despots who are entrenching monarchic principles on democratic soil as they drive downwards freedom and rights, civilization, health, morals and intellectuality in the new commercial feudalism.”

As Noam Chomsky points out, the sentiment expressed by the Lowell millworkers predated Marxism.

“At one time in the U.S. in the mid-nineteenth century, a hundred and fifty years ago, working for wage labor was considered not very different from chattel slavery,” Chomsky told David Barsamian. “That was not an unusual position. That was the slogan of the Republican Party, the banner under which Northern workers went to fight in the Civil War. We’re against chattel slavery and wage slavery. Free people do not rent themselves to others. Maybe you’re forced to do it temporarily, but that’s only on the way to becoming a free person, a free man, to put it in the rhetoric of the day. You become a free man when you’re not compelled to take orders from others. That’s an Enlightenment ideal. Incidentally, this was not coming from European radicalism. There were workers in Lowell, Mass., a couple of miles from where we are. You could even read editorials in the New York Times saying this around that time. It took a long time to drive into people’s heads the idea that it is legitimate to rent yourself. Now that’s unfortunately pretty much accepted. So that’s internalizing oppression. Anyone who thinks it’s legitimate to be a wage laborer is internalizing oppression in a way which would have seemed intolerable to people in the mills, let’s say, a hundred and fifty years ago. … [I]t’s an [unfortunate] achievement [of indoctrination in our culture].”

Our consumer society and celebrity culture foster a frightening historical amnesia. We chatter mindlessly about something called the “American Dream.” And now that the oligarchic elite have regained control of all levers of power, and that dream is being exposed as a cruel hoax, we are being shoved back into the cage. There will be hell to pay to get back to where we were.

Slick public relations campaigns, the collapse of public education—nearly a third of the country is illiterate or semiliterate—and the rise of amoral politicians such as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, who posed as liberals while they sold their souls for corporate money, have left us largely defenseless. The last vestiges of unionized workers in the public sector are reduced to protesting in Wisconsin for collective bargaining—in short, the ability to ask employers for decent working conditions. That shows how far the country has deteriorated. And it looks as though even this basic right to ask, as well as raise money through union dues, has been successfully revoked in Madison. The only hope now is more concerted and militant disruptions of the systems of power.

The public debate, dominated by corporate-controlled systems of information, ignores the steady impoverishment of the working class and absence of legal and regulatory mechanisms to prevent mounting corporate fraud and abuse. The airwaves are saturated with corporate apologists. They ask us why public-sector employees have benefits—sneeringly called “entitlements”—which nonunionized working- and middle-class people are denied. This argument is ingenious. It pits worker against worker in a mad scramble for scraps. And until we again speak in the language of open class warfare, grasping, as those who went before us did, that the rich will always protect themselves at our expense, we are doomed to a 21st century serfdom.

The pillars of the liberal establishment, which once made incremental and piecemeal reform possible, have collapsed. The liberal church forgot that heretics exist. It forgot that the scum of society—look at the new Newt Gingrich—always wrap themselves in the flag and clutch the Christian cross to promote programs that mock the core teachings of Jesus Christ. And, for all their years of seminary training and Bible study, these liberal clergy have stood by mutely as televangelists betrayed and exploited the Gospel to promote bigotry, hatred and greed. What was the point, I wonder, of ordination? Did they think the radical message of the Gospel was something they would never have to fight for? Schools and universities, on their knees for corporate dollars and their boards dominated by hedge fund and investment managers, have deformed education into the acquisition of narrow vocational skills that serve specialized corporate interests and create classes of drone-like systems managers. They make little attempt to equip students to make moral choices, stand up for civic virtues and seek a life of meaning. These moral and ethical questions are never even asked. Humanities departments are vanishing as swiftly as the ocean’s fish stocks.

The electronic and much of the print press has become a shameless mouthpiece for the powerful and a magnet for corporate advertising. It makes little effort to give a platform to those who without them cannot be heard, instead diverting us with celebrity meltdowns, lavish lifestyle reports and gossip. Legitimate news organizations, such as NPR and The New York Times, are left cringing and apologizing before the beast—right-wing groups that hate “liberal” news organizations not because of any bias, but because they center public discussion on verifiable fact. And verifiable fact is not convenient to ideologues whose goal is the harnessing of inchoate rage and hatred.

Artists, who once had something to say, have retreated into elite enclaves, preoccupied themselves with abstract, self-referential garbage, frivolous entertainment and spectacle. Celebrities, working for advertising agencies and publicists, provide our daily mini-dramas and flood the airwaves with lies on behalf of corporate sponsors. The Democratic Party has sold out working men and women for corporate money. It has permitted the state apparatus to be turned over to corporate interests. There is no liberal institution left—the press, labor, culture, public education, the church or the Democratic Party—that makes any effort to hold back the corporate juggernaut. It is up to us.

We have tolerated the intolerant—from propaganda outlets such as Fox News to Christian fascists to lunatics in the Republican Party to Wall Street and corporations—and we are paying the price. The only place left for us is on the street. We must occupy state and federal offices. We must foment general strikes. The powerful, with no check left on their greed and criminality, are gorging on money while they busily foreclose our homes, bust the last of our unions, drive up our health care costs and cement into place a permanent underclass of the broken and the poor. They are slashing our most essential and basic services—including budgets for schools, firefighters and assistance programs for children and the elderly—so we can pay for the fraud they committed when they wiped out $14 trillion of housing wealth, wages and retirement savings. All we have left is the capacity to say “no.” And if enough of us say “no,” if enough of us refuse to cooperate, the despots are in trouble.

“Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reforms,” Frederick Douglass said in 1857. “The whole history of the progress of human history shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of struggle. ... If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. ...”

Chris Hedges, a fellow at The Nation Institute and a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, is the author of “Death of the Liberal Class.” 

Source URL: http://www.truth-out.org/power-concedes-nothing-without-a-demand68454

All republished content that appears on Truthout has been obtained by permission or license.

Bees feed us: now they need our help : Slow Food USA

Bees feed us: now they need our help : Slow Food USA

Honeybees are under attack but despite years of research the culprit for colony collapse disorder (CCD) has yet to be identified.
What we do know is that there’s probably not just one thing causing the massive die-offs, but several factors interacting to cause a perfect, lethal storm.

READ THE SHOCK DOCTRINE....BY NAOMI KLEIN....IT WILL EXPLAIN EVERYTHING

Happy International Womens Day...In Solidarity and Joy with all women everywhere.
A  new world fairytale story found at:  http://pinkcoyote.blogspot.com/
"Once upon a time in a land far away, a beautiful, independent, self-assured princess happened upon a frog as she sat contemplating ecological issues on the shores of an unpolluted pond in a verdant meadow near her castle.

The frog hopped into the princess' lap and said: " Elegant Lady, I was once a handsome prince, until an evil witch cast a spell upon me. One kiss from you, however, and I will turn back into the dapper, young prince that I am and then, my sweet, we can marry and set up housekeeping in your castle with my mother, where you can prepare my meals, clean my clothes, bear my children, and forever feel grateful and happy doing so."

That night, as the princess dined sumptuously on lightly sauteed frog legs seasoned in a white wine and onion cream sauce, she chuckled and thought to herself ... I don't fuckin think so."

 THIS IS AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE:::::::::

Wisconsin Bill Could Hand Utility Rights to Koch Brothers      By Dave Best | March 2nd, 2011                                                                                                                http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/03/koch-brothers-profits-before-people

 
Can the State of Wisconsin sell off its public utilities to its corporate donors for pennies on the dollar without any oversight by the Wisconsin Public Service Commission? 

If new Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has his way and Senate Bill 11 is passed in its entirety, two of Walker’s largest donors, oil billionaires David and Charles Koch (“the Koch Brothers”), could be handed free reign on Wisconsin public utilities.  The media has focused on the protests surrounding stripping bargaining rights from most state workers, but handing over Wisconsin’s utilities to one of our nation’s largest polluters could also have a major impact.

Based on a legal loophole in the middle of Wisconsin Senate Bill 11, according to Forbes, the State of Wisconsin can sell or contract out management of state-owned heating, cooling and power plants without seeking bids.

If this law passes, the state can sell off utilities without any bidding or review process, all for “the public good.”   The Wisconsin Public Service Commission serves utility customers to insure adequate and reasonably priced service is provided. Utilities cannot change rates or build large power plants or major transmission lines without the approval of the PSC.

Passage of WI Senate Bill 11, however, would keep the PSC on the sidelines for sale of these public utilities. Conspiracy theorists are calling “pay for play” over fear that the Koch Brothers’ donations to help elect Walker back in November will yield them a portfolio of Wisconsin utilities on the cheap.

The Koch Brothers own Koch Industries, an energy and consumer products conglomerate based in Kansas that owns a wealth of companies including Georgia Pacific and Koch Pipeline. Personally, Charles and David Koch are each tied for fifth place on Forbes annual list for the 400 Richest Americans ($21.5 billion each).

Wonder about Koch Industries environmental record? “Koch Industries is one of the biggest polluters in America, so it’s not surprising that they’ve spent millions blocking measures to protect our air and water,” said Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune. “The Kochs have also served as one of the biggest obstacles to our transition to a clean energy economy.”

Wisconsin has a Republican dominated state legislature and although the bill has passed the Assembly, all 14 Wisconsin Democratic State Senators have fled the state to prevent a vote by the Republican majority. Without progress, Governor Walker now threatens to issue layoff notices to 1,000 state workers.

Now seems to be a great time for Wisconsin to kick its “Koch habit.” Otherwise we risk thousands of Wisconsinites losing their jobs, the ability of workers to bargain be cut, public utilities get donated to the governor’s donors, renewable energy construction be halted and clean air rights be trampled.

FROM OUR REAL REPORTERS AT ALTERNET

As AlterNet's Washington bureau chief Adele Stan puts it, Walker is "carrying out the wishes of his corporate master." But why are the brothers Koch so interested in stifling labor rights in Wisconsin? For one thing, they have significant business interests in the region, with at least 17 facilities and offices in the state and some 4,000 miles of pipeline through Koch Pipeline Company, L.P.

With the almighty dollar at stake, the Koch-funded astroturf group Americans for Prosperity has launched a pro-Walker campaign, comprised of a propaganda-filled Web site and petition, at least $342,000 worth of ad time on network and cable TV, and anti-union rallies at the Wisconsin state capitol building, for which AFP paid to bus in Tea Partiers.

Did the Kochs think no one would notice or care about the influence of AFP and Koch Industries in Wisconsin? If so, they were wrong. Word of a Koch Industries boycott is starting to spread around the progressive blogosphere. Daily Kos community site blogger geebeegee has a rather giant roundup of Koch products and notes, "Their major holdings are very difficult to boycott -- other than the promotion of clean energy and environmental laws, you may be stuck buying their energy products, directly or indirectly. However, they do produce some consumer products that you should put to memory to NEVER purchase again." There's also a Boycott and Defeat Koch Industries Facebook page that offers the same information and more

Here's the colossal list of products being boycotted:

Angel Soft toilet paper

Brawny paper towels

Dixie plates, bowls, napkins and cups

Mardi Gras napkins and towels

Quilted Northern toilet paper

Soft 'n Gentle toilet paper

Sparkle napkins

Vanity fair napkins

Zee napkins

Georgia-Pacific paper products and envelopes

All Georgia-Pacific lumber and building products

OF THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE

Giving One Another Some Slack

by Justine Willis Toms

Imagine you are asked to watch a short video in which six people-three in white shirts and three in black shirts-pass basketballs around. While you watch, you must keep a silent count of the number of passes made by the people in white shirts. At some point, a gorilla strolls into the middle of the action, faces the camera and thumps its chest, and then leaves, spending nine seconds on screen. Would you see the gorilla? An experiment at Harvard University several years ago, found that half of the people who watched the video and counted the passes missed the gorilla. It was as though the gorilla was invisible. This was called the selective attention test.
I must admit I recently failed just such a test. It was hard for me to believe I was so blind. It happened when I stopped by my local apothecary to pick up a refill on a prescription. There was a woman at the counter paying for hers and so I lined up behind her thinking to myself, "Oh good, there's no line." When I stepped up to the counter the pharmacist pointed to a man at my left and said, "I believe he was next."
I did remember seeing a man in a red shirt looking over some shelves of over the counter medications, but he didn't seem to be waiting in any sort of line.
Another clerk then asked me to step to the rear of the line. It was at that point I noticed five or six people standing in line waiting to step up to the counter. I thought to myself, "Where did they come from? They sure did appear suddenly." I was positive they weren't in line when I walked in and said so to the clerk. A look of, what seemed to me to be, disgust came over her face and she insisted they were, indeed, in line when I came in. With no small amount of irritation and still fully believing myself to be in the right, I moved to the back of the line.
When finally I stepped to the counter, I once more insisted on my innocence that there was no one in line when I arrived, and went on to concede that, if there were, I must have been blind and unconscious and just didn't notice. I said my brain must have been a million miles away--which it was.
The two clerks continued to act as if I had purposely butted in line, and I took their perception very personally. I was devastated and deeply shamed. I'd been going there for over twenty years and was known by most of the clerks and pharmacists there. I felt I was given no quarter of understanding.
As I walked out I remembered the gorilla story, and the selective attention test that was conducted. I realized that I absolutely did not perceive the people in line, even though there were many witnesses to the contrary.
The lesson I learned from this was how, in these stressful times, we need to cut each other some slack. Maybe it would have been a different scenario if, when I stepped up to the counter, the clerk had not presumed I butted in line, but, as incredulous as it might seem, accepted that I, in fact, didn't "see" the line and offer something like, "Oh, you must not have noticed the line of people, I believe this man was next."
Allowing me the benefit of the doubt might have gently pulled me out of my reverie to notice more accurately my surroundings—or not—I'll never know.
What I do know is that I hope I can be quick to give others the benefit of the doubt. I do believe these stressful times call for us to be ever more gentle and kind toward one another; after all, there may be unseen gorillas in the room.