THE END IS THE BEGINNING

In his book on Transitions, William Bridges said you have to let yourself live through an ending before you can make a beginning. So when I returned from my U.N. internship in New York I set out to live through that ending mindfully, and begin to find my way into the next chapter of my life.

As I drove through the lovely Kentucky countryside, welcoming the green fields and forests back into my soul, it occured to me that each of us has infinite room inside for MANY landscapes. You have to let them in--but once there, they are yours to keep, to take out and turn over, to look at and enjoy for the rest of your life.

I thanked God for the many landscapes in my soul: the colorful canyonlands of the Southwest, the temperate rainforest and redwoods of the Northwest, the diverse Mixed Mesophytic (sorry, couldn't resist!) forests of Kentucky, and the skyscraper canyons of lower Manhattan. All have changed and enriched my life--infinite gifts from the infinite God.

HOME AGAIN

And home looks great! from my room I can see grass and trees instead of bricks... but I feel like I (like Dorothy!) came home by whirlwind, and my room LOOKS like it. From LaGuardia Airport, I looked back with nostalgia at the Manhattan skyline, and shed copious tears at leaving my dear Franciscan community (who are in the picture, with Jan and me and a couple of the Franciscan friars from the parish). But I'm glad to get back to my dear Ursuline community, and the "wide open spaces" of Kentucky. And just in time! according to subway literature, the end of the world is scheduled for May 21, and for that I would rather be here than in New York City.

There is too much in my head and heart to share in a last blog at this point, but I did want to give you the last report on the Sustainable Development Commission. The final draft of the outcome document is still being worked on, but we know a lot of language that the NGOs wanted in there was taken out. For example, getting the "free, prior, and informed consent" of indigenous people affected by mining on their ancestral lands. Too much money at stake for certain countries that I shall not name here!

But as the UN moves forward to the next Earth Summit (Rio+20) in June 2012, work has already begun in the NGOs, to be sure that the nations are faithful to the UN charter and previous agreements. Some UN speakers and expert witnesses told us the world is at the environmental tipping point. Every country on the planet is being affected, but the economic juggernaut is driving us on toward a disastrous future: poverty, food and water crises, war, climate change. Countries lack the political will to take control of the situation. Our governments are not organized to deal with this, with corporations and special interest groups in charge, and unsustainable patterns of consumption and production entrenched. Rio+20 may be our best hope to shift to a new paradigm.

Rio will be focusing on the development of a "Green Economy," based on the three pillars of economic, environmental, and social concerns. You will be hearing more about this from UNANIMA, and asked for your input in specific areas. We as individuals have to keep OUR government on the path to sustainablity!

I will be keeping track of UN activities--you can too, if you have access to a computer. You can actually watch some UN meetings and press briefings by Googling UN Journal. When you see a little red camera symbol, click on it to watch live or archived video feed.

In the meantime, this is Michele, your temporary "UN Correspondent," signing off from Lydia Drive, Owensboro Kentucky. Thank you for being my companions on this breathtaking journey...it was fun having you along, and I will forever appreciate having this opportunity.

WORSE THAN I MADE IT SOUND

Well! did I get a crash course in international politics these past two weeks. Though I did go to a lot of interesting side events, the fascinating thing was watching the delegates work on the text. It was especially instructive as the week wore on and the night sessions lengthened (for the past two nights in a row they didn't finish until six in the morning). You saw which nations were battling with which (we even had a few sparks between two particular nations on the floor of the General Assembly Hall) and soon caught on which issues were the hot ones. Trade, money promised and not given, the dumping of toxic waste in other peoples' countries, and just generally the huge imbalance of power / distribution of resources between and among countries.

The playing field is a little more level RE negotiations because of alliances...for example, the 20-something countries of the European Union negotiate together. There are 77 small, less developed countries plus China ("called the G-77 plus China") and they really have their act together. The US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand usually back each other up. Why? I'll tell you about it sometime in some way other than a public blog!

At one point, after half an hour haggling over the word, "local" and three hours going back and forth on three small subpoints, I was about to go "EEEEEK" in frustration, and even the chair (to that point Mr Cool) commented on the fact that we had not completed anything that afternoon. It was interesting to watch the style of the different chairpeople--what negotiating skills! At one point a chairman said that it was obvious nobody was going to budge, so he told them to meet after the meeting and come to some resolution.

Well, it's 20 minutes to suppertime (which is, in my honor, pasta and meatballs) and I leave at 7 in the morning to catch a plane. I still haven't finished my report for Catherine, or finished packing, and I haven't finished telling you about Rio plus 20, so I'll have a wrap-up blog after I get home, how's that? Kentucky, here I come!

UP IN THE 'HOOD

Someone just asked me if I would be glad to get back to where I have a car to get around in. I haven't even missed a car; everything I could possibly need is within a block of here. Hardware store, dollar stores, UPS center, two real grocery stores and the Gourmet Garage, wine shop, jewelry store, bakeries, several drug stores, banks, lots of restaurants, coffee shops, beauty / barber shops, a florist/ plant shop, shoe repair, keys made, clothing stores, a Catholic school and church, and (if you absolutely HAVE to have one) even a car rental place. That's literally within ONE BLOCK of our front door!

And everything else in Manhattan? A subway or bus or a combination of both can get you within just a few blocks of whatever you want. Most of the subways and buses are handicapped accessible, many with elevators or escalators (all the buses I've been on "kneel down" to let you on, and do accomodate wheelchairs).

And so many surprises! what looks like a tiny bookstore has an escalator leading to the upper floor which covers a whole block! Where else but in NYC could you find a tiny Ob-Gyn Clinic tucked away between a Dunkin' Donuts and an Irish Pub?

Kurt Vonnegut called NYC "Skyscraper National Park" and I do love the skyscrapers...but I think my favorite part of the city are the neighborhoods. A photographer, Todd Webb, said that NYC "is like a series of small towns," and it's true. Right off many busy main streets will be little tree-lined neighborhoods of lovely old apartment houses, with flowers in the window boxes, and their own unique characters. Then there is China Town, Korea Town, Little Italy, Greenwich Village, Chelsea--not to even mention Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, or Staten Island--all completely different species.

Wherever you go, just remember that "traffic signals in New York are just rough guidelines" (David Letterman) and you'll be OK.

THE ROAD TO RIO

This sounds like an old Bob Hope / Bing Crosby movie, doesn't it? Well, it's a "where we go from here" idea at the UN right now. Though they certainly have enough on their plates here at the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD), everyone keeps peering down the road to the next Earth Summit (Rio+20) at Rio de Janeiro in June of 2012. The first Earth Summit in 1992 was also held in Rio. It resulted in the most comprehensive plan of action ever agreed to by the international community, and had a powerful influence on international dialog:

• for the first time, international discussion combined the ideas of human rights, economic development, and environmental stewardship




• global attention became more focused on issues like poverty, the scarcity of food and water, the need to deal with toxic substances in the environment and the need for alternative forms of energy




• many countries actually repealed discriminatory laws against women and other "marginalized" groups

So talking about issues CAN lead to change and to the reshaping of global attitudes...somehow when issues are addressed by the UN or ideas are written down in UN documents, they acquire a legitimacy they might not have had before. But lots will have to be done in preparation for Rio if it is to address the eradication of poverty, global crises of food, water and energy, and everything else we are discussing here at the CSD. In the next blog I'll tell you about some problems surfacing in the discussions at the CSD these two weeks...and UNANIMA is going to be asking you how you would prioritize certain issues.

ALL WORK AND NO PLAY?

Come on, you know me better than that! I came home early today so I could stop by Grand Central Market and get some fresh mint--yes, indeed, I am going to show these sisters what a DERBY PARTY is like. We're going to have a prize for the best hat, incentives for Win / Place / Show, and a booby prize for the last horse. I'm even passing up a last chance to go to the opera to put this on. (By the way, I saw Rigoletto the other night; there was only one free ticket and there was only one person willing to go by herself!)

On my last weekend in New York I want to visit Strawberry Fields in Central Park, where Yoko Ono put in a memorial garden for John Lennon (who was assassinated across the street at the Dakota Apartment Building). While I'm close I'll visit the Ramble, a good bird-watching place in the park, they say. And Riverside Park down on the Hudson River (just a couple of blocks from us) is also beckoning. It's been a tiring week, and New York has been a little tense after the death of Bin Laden. Lots of police and National Guard in the subway, armed with assault rifles. It will be good to have a little time with nature, such as it is in NYC. Even Central Park, as big as it is, is basically just a zoo for plants--not any real woods or meadows. You're always aware of the "corral" of buildings.

But this week had two high points; I literally almost ran into Sister JoAnn Mark, former Academic Dean at Brescia. She was attending a couple of days of the CSD. She says HI to all her friends. She told Catherine Ferguson that her time at Brescia were the best 14 years of her life. And the other high point? The Empire State Building was 80 years old last Sunday. Happy Birthday, ESB! and Happy Derby Day, all you Kentuckians...

BUCKETS OF BRACKETS

More on how the UN does business! Last Sunday at our orientation for the commission meetings these next two weeks, our facilitator explained the different kinds of United Nations BRACKETS: Alternative, Contentious, Suspicious, Tactical, Uncertain, Waiting, and Weary. Those of us new to the process (like me) didn't "get it" until later this week.

The 50-some delegates divide into two big rooms, and each group takes a hunk of the text of the draft document provided by the Secretary General...which document contains most of the ideas raised at the past year's "study" meeting, plus ideas contributed by major groups like NGOs and other ideas from various sources. They began going through the 24-page, very dense document paragraph by paragraph, with member states adding or changing or taking away words or paragraphs, with each modification put in brackets with the contributing country identified. So some brackets represent alternative wordings, some represent issues they are prepared to do battle over, or showing that they are suspicious of why that wording was used, or maybe used as a way to bring another country to the bargaining table, or just because they are uncertain or waiting to hear from their capital what to do. Or just because it is very late at night and they are too tired to go on! Knowing the kind of brackets in play tells a country how to negotiate.

We are now through the first reading, and you can see negotiations beginning in earnest. At our morning briefing for the Major Groups, someone from the Major Groups is designated "rapporteur" (remember at the UN we never use an English word where a good French one will do!) to report back to the group on what the member states did the day before. I volunteered to do that, and a couple of the native French-speaking sisters in my house were laughing at me at breakfast this morning. I found out that in French schools a "rapporteur" is a "tattle tale." So much for putting "United Natiions NGO Rapporteur" on my resume!

DOWN TO BUSINESS

We're immersed in the nuts and bolts of the two-week Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD), and this is really different from all my prrevious UN experiences. It's very intense, because this is the second year in the two-year cycle of meetings; the first year for every different Commission is devoted to learning from experts and having panel discussions and talking and bragging about what your country is doing--but this second year is when they actually have to come up with policy, and when the heavy negotiations begin. Sometimes the discussions go on until the wee hours of the morning. If you go to everything you literally don't have time for lunch or for supper (and since you can't take food into the meeting rooms you scarf down a sandwich in the hall or up in the little food area upstairs).

At the first session on Monday morning, each of the Major Groups got two minutes to give their comments on the "Chairman's Draft Negotiation Document." The nine Major Groups for the CSD are Women, Youth, Farmers, Business and Industry, Science and Technology, Indigenous People, Local Governments, Labor, and--us NGOs. Why these particular groups to represent all of civil society? Why not education or health? The people who did our orientation explained that WE were the groups who made the most noise or caused the most trouble at the last CSD. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

So...all the NGOs have to agree on what's most important to them for their two minutes in the sun (and since the religious NGOs cooperate with each other most, it's not as hard as you might think.) And the Major Groups are always jockeying and strategizing for more time at the table, so we will get to be heard more, later in the process.

Anyway, it's been interesting to interact with all these segments of society and hear their particular concerns. Kind of like being in community!

SPRINGTIME IN NYC

Yes, indeed! even the subway is getting into the spirit. Every workday, I ride the shuttle subway between Times Square and Grand Central Station, and they are getting decked out for spring and summer. One car has a toad painted on the outside (painted to look like a frog--but I know the difference); the inside is decorated to make you think you are sitting beside a frog pond. The second car has a tree on the outside, with a forest inside (except that the trees are pines and the branches overhead are deciduous trees--don't they have any biologists on their staff?). The third is my favorite: butterflies on the outside, and on the inside you're sitting in a grassy field of daisies with blue skies overhead. Makes you more cheerful about being underground on a nice day.

My real spring celebration was yesterday at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, where the cherry blossoms were at their peak. They are supposed to have one of the largest collection of Japanese cherry trees anywhere outside of Japan. There was a celebration of Japanese culture going on, with dancing, music, and crafts (they tried unsuccessfully to lure me into making Origami peace cranes). Oh, and the LILACS were all blooming, but I finally gave up on trying to smell every one of them. I allowed myself a little nostalgic visit to the desert conservatory, and sweated my way through a nice tropical collection...and even found a couple of dirt paths to walk on. They had the best Bonsai collection I have ever seen, with artistic little trees of many varieties, one a couple of feet tall and documented as over 300 years old.

Not to speak of "old" but definitely speaking of blossoms, the other spring beauty in the picture with me is my "New York" cousin Sharon (from my Dad's side of the family)...we are the same age but she has always been the more glamorous of the two of us. We had a great visit in a little cafe in Bryant Park, next to the big Public Library downtown.

The only thing that makes me think it's not spring here is that we're not having tornados; it sounds like the rest of the country is making up for that...what a year! An increase in the frequency and severity of violent storms is a predicted outcome of climate change--so here at the UN we are doing what we can about those storms. It will take a long time though, even if we start right now. So we have to start right now. Here at number 204 we are praying for all who lost their lives or lost loved ones... You all be safe, and enjoy every blossom that comes your way.