Since the start of the State of “Emergency,” I have been reading the local obits closely. I reckoned this would be an excellent, independent, non-governmental source to tally deaths. Obviously, if there was a great rise in the death rate, this section of the paper would become noticeably thicker, right? Well, that never happened because, fortunately, there hasn’t been much excess all-cause mortality in NH. In fact, NH had more deaths during the 2017 flu season, but that’s a discussion for another day.
Right now, I simply want to honor Jeannemarie Colgan. I don’t know this lady, but anyone who writes their own obit must have been some kind of fascinating person. While it sounds like she had an adventurous life, it also seems like it may have been lonely towards the end. This moved me, and I’m sharing her obit here to give her a decent final send-off, one she hopefully deserves! R.I.P., Jeannemarie Colgan, who “died the other day.”
Reflecting during the ride home from yesterday’s freedom rally, I realized several things:
As authoritarianism rises, I am meeting the most amazing, brave, thoughtful people who are taking great risks and making many sacrifices to fight for our liberties, and I am grateful for that;
I am also filled with gratitude that I did the work and regained my health, and through doing so, made myself capable of sharing the love I feel for the world and *everyone* in it with others;
My personal mantra for the past few years has been “Live Free And Thrive!” Yesterday, hundreds of people chanted this with me during my speech and it filled my heart;
We also chanted “Turn it off! Turn it off!” referring to the legacy news and social media that is designed to divide us. Here’s a short clip of the start of my speech. The battery ran out, but the full speech should be forthcoming soon.
It struck me that during the last days of apartheid, one of my favorite protest bands, Johannes Kerkorrel en Die Gereformeerde Blues Band, had a song called “Sit Dit Af!”–literally “Switch It Off,” and for the very same reason: They are polluting your brain. Here is the original song, in case you’re curious.
The following post is from 6 years ago. I cannot think of a better time to re-share my thoughts on banning books and censoring information, especially in light of YouTube’s announcement yesterday [see pic] that they will be removing ALL “anti-vaccine” content from its platform. I just saw a Tweet from Dr. Ron Paul saying,
Very shocked that @YouTube has completely removed the Channel of my Ron Paul Institute: no warning, no strikes, no evidence. Only explanation was “severe or repeated violations of our community guidelines.” Channel is rarely used. The appeal was automatically rejected. Help?
Ron Paul
Carla Gericke
September 30, 2015 · Shared with Public
Censorship has always fascinated me–who gets to decide what someone else can read? Why? By what authority can one person tell another what they are “permitted” to know? I reject the legitimacy of censorship out of hand. No one has such authority, and history proves those who wish to control what others consume, are, without exception, eventually exposed as the bad guys.
Growing up in South Africa, many things–music, literature, art–were outright banned and censored, from ANC symbols, to most international music, to the movie “Black Beauty” solely because of its title, to certain words in newspapers, yes, literally blacked out on the page like you see in dystopian movies (and, say, in the 9-11 Commission Report), words like “Casspir” (the South African equivalent of “BEARCAT,” the armored trucks now being seeded by the Federales into peaceful communities across America, including more than 20 in New Hampshire) because if you banned the mentioning of the vehicles being used to fight illegal border wars, well then, reporting becomes problematic and difficult to do, and therefore, perhaps, journalists will stop writing about such pesky things, neh?
Under apartheid, South Africa had the “Jacobsen’s Index of Objectionable Literature” which contained a “Complete List of All Publications in Alphabetical Order, Together with Authors, Prohibited from Importation Into the Republic of South Africa, and All Other Banned Literature.” The list is long, and difficult to find online. I have ordered a hard copy of “A Culture of Censorship: Secrecy and Intellectual Repression in South Africa,” secondhand for $0.02 plus shipping from Amazon, which reminds me of two things: 1. How soon we forget our histories; and 2. Thank god for the free market. If only said book could be delivered by an aerobot drone to my door, but alas, the FAA has been spending its time on such important issues as licensing paper airplanes for flight.
South African author, Nadine Gordimer wrote in 1968, republished in The New York Times Books section in 1998: “All the work, past, present and future, of an individual writer can be erased by a ban on his spoken and written word. The ban not only restricts his political activity, which is its avowed intention, but negates his creativity–he becomes a non-person, since his form of communion and communication with the society in which he lives is cut…. And so long as our society remains compartmentalized, our literature will be stretched on the rack between propaganda, on the one side, and, on the other, art as an embellishment of leisure.”
Some people wonder why I take issue with so many things I see happening in my adopted country, and, frankly, why I refuse to shut up about it, to give up, to cave in, to just say, Nah, this crap is too hard to change, the difference we can make too infinitesimal, so why try? It’s because I have *lived through a police state* before, and America is lock-step marching there.
This is not hyperbole. I will grant you: America is doing its police state right, “better,” more subtle, more comfortable, of course, it’s what America does, after all. This police state is hidden behind both the “propaganda” arm, and mostly, the “embellishment of leisure”: The sports, the reality TV, the Christmas carol commercials to consumers in September, the debates, the joke of it all.
The bread and circuses, the tinny music piping from the organ grinder while the monkeys dance, while MILLIONS of peaceful people rot in prisons for voluntarily inhaling a plant, while MILLIONS are peaceful people in far away lands are being murdered under the cloak of the Stars and Stripes, while MILLIONS of people are being displaced by state-funded terror raining down from the skies.
Why does #BannedBooksWeek matter? It matters because it creates an opportunity to talk about the bad guys. And, I am afraid to inform you, the US government is a bad, bad guy, he’s the boyfriend who beats you then tells you he can’t live without you–or you can’t live without him?–and you go back.
Me? I decided a decade ago that I wasn’t taking the Fed Gov back, that I would take my chances with a smaller wife beater (the state of NH), and see what kind of difference I can make on a local level.
This morning, hundreds of protesters showed up at St. Anslem in Goffstown, NH, to raise our voices against the un-Constitutional mandates coming from DC. We reject DC’s authoritarianism, mandates, and madness.
The NH Executive Council is set to vote on whether to accept federal funds to create a vaccine registry in NH, which was the last state to create such a registry. Because we value privacy (see this NH Constitutional Amendment that passed in 2018: [Art.] 2-b. [Right of Privacy.] An individual’s right to live free from governmental intrusion in private or personal information is natural, essential, and inherent), there are ways to opt-out, but now, seems this “opt-out” list IS a list, and this needs to be addressed.
Honestly, I have not paid a huge amount of attention to this issue in the past. I vaguely knew “other activists” were working on health freedom/vaccine issues, and I have had my hands full with a myriad of other “loss of liberty” issues (police accountability and militarization, open/transparent government and Right-To-Know, 1A, 2A, 4A, 10A, etc), but now I will get to work to get up to speed so I can help answer questions Granite Staters have going forward.
Watch my quick take live video from the rally HERE.
See how big the crowd was HERE, and hear me say, “We are NOT sheep on your Pharm.”
See photos HERE.
What can YOU do to help? Come to Concord on Saturday, 10/2 from Noon to 3PM. March starts at the State Library and then heads over to the State House. Pack a picnic, bring the whole family, and come celebrate freedom and camaraderie!
If you listen to people like me back then, where would you be right now?
In New Hampshire.
With a thousands-strong community of like-minded people who believe in self-ownership.
Probably owning some property or saving to buy some soon.
If you switched to Ancestral living like I have, your health would be vastly improved.
If you’d bought $100 worth of Bitcoin on Porcupine Day, February 3, 2016, you would now have more than $8,000.
Maybe you should stop listening to people who tell you you are weak and a victim and that only they can save you, and start listening to the people who embody their principles, who live fulfilled and healthy lives, and who think YOU can be and do whatever YOU set your mind to. Come over to the growth mindset! It’s awesome over here!
From a Facebook post in 2019: A friend asked for more details about my weight loss journey, and since I wrote a long-ish response to her, thought I’d share it here too.
1. Alcohol: I quit drinking in Dec 2017, and for me, that was a big part of the success story, but mostly bc I was drinking a lot of wine daily, and those calories added up… Also, wasn’t making the best food/life decisions when sauced up. 
2. Eating out: I don’t eat out much anymore, and when I do, I usually just get a salad with some kind of protein. Not eating out is mostly bc my home cooked meals are better than 99% of local restaurants, and I’ve gotten REALLY fussy about where my food is sourced. So that’s mostly a personal choice, but I know people who can balance the eating out and keto quite successfully, but you have to be willing to be particular when you place your order (and that’s OK).
3. What’s in the house/microwaving: We did a serious PURGE of our pantry when we switched. Threw out/donated anything that is not supposed to cross our lips. This is an important step. Trust me… My parents came to visit, and my dad put some Pringles in the pantry, and for me, it was like having crack in the house and I ended up eating IT ALL, LOL, and then reminding myself that I can’t have stuff like that around… So my pantry has a million types of NUTS instead.
The crux of my journey–everyone’s is different–but mine was about getting unhealthy ADDICTIONS out of my life. Ones I wasn’t even willing to admit to myself were addictions: Sugar, carbs, alcohol, negative/nihilistic people–I’m working on digital minimalism now (less screen time)…
So to answer your question about “a normal life,” you have to ask yourself what is “normal”? Is society’s definition of “normal” what YOU want, or is what society accepts as “OK” really unhealthy/less than optimal/possibly not what you want or need to be your best YOU?
I no longer take my cues from what’s “normal” but rather from: What do **I** want? I want to be healthy long-term and have an excellent quality of living, which means **I** have to WORK AT IT BECAUSE NO ONE ELSE CAN DO IT FOR ME. I want to look my best for my age. I want to EMBODY a life free of as much statism as I can muster, which means eliminating the toxic stuff that is regarded as “normal” in our lives, but that isn’t normal, acceptable, or good for us… Like the Standard American Diet (SAD!) and the entire middle part of a grocery store…
The other major change I made is getting enough sleep–we read in bed and are asleep by 10pm, and up around 5am.
Three books I found inspiring: This Naked Mind; Girl, Wash Your Face; and Bright Line Eating.
I’ll tell you the secret of my success: STICKING TO THE PROGRAM. When I stopped making exceptions, and stopped “negotiating” with myself (which created a lot of cyclical/negative mind-talk) and just DID THE RIGHT THINGS, it became EASY.
THAT’S how you form new and better habits. (I even stopped biting my nails–after 45 years!)
Now, getting to a place where you can do that, isn’t so easy, but those three books will lead you in the right direction. The other thing is once you get your hormones/sugar levels in balance and are eating right, you genuinely don’t get hungry/cravings anymore, and it all gets pretty awesome, easy and ends up simply being how you live and are.
In other words: *YOU* CONTROL HOW YOU LIVE YOUR LIFE AND IT IS A DAILY CHOICE, SO CHOOSE WISELY. 
Keep me posted and GOOD LUCK! I’m proof positive it works!
If you need a primer to crystallize what promoters of free markets, personal choice, individual liberties, self-ownership, and the dignity of human freedom are up against, I give you the manipulation of search results by Google as Exhibit A. (I did this experiment myself.)
The top image is the prompt Google fills in for you when you start typing the words, “How many people died under c…”. The bottom image shows that you have to type the full sentence with no prompts in order to research how many people died under communism. Clearly, you are being manipulated into thinking capitalism, which has lifted more people out of poverty than any other system, is bad.
Now, further consider, communism and its ugly baby sister, socialism, have killed magnitudes greater amounts by HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS than capitalism has, and then ask yourself… Who benefits if these facts are distorted and/or memory-holed?
Control Freaks, statists, socialists, and communists benefit. Big corporations, who collude with Big Gov, of course, also benefit. Everyone needs to use the internet in a lockdown, eh?
Who loses? We do. Ordinary, good, decent, hardworking folk. The ones who pay our bills. Who try to save a little. Who maintain our health. We are being squeezed between the mob of “useful idiots” and the oligarchy.
WE MUST UNITE.
The issue of self-ownership is not a left/right issue. It is “us” against “forceful global powers that want to control every aspect of your life” issue. They claim this control will benefit us all in the name of “safety” but they are lying to you. They are manipulating you. They are gaslighting you. They are abusing you.
Now, you may end up “feeling safe” for a little while, but you will not be safe. You will be a slave. A cog in the system. You will no longer be free, and what is the point of living if not the joyous, somewhat dangerous pursuit of happiness?
None of us get out alive, so we may as well enjoy the ride!
Liberty, freedom, consent, mutual cooperation and voluntary exchange are being presented to you as bad things, but we all know deep within our core this is untrue. Nothing is more rewarding than being the steward of your own life, and this right is being exterminated.
If we lose our inalienable right to body autonomy and the right to say NO to forced medical interventions based on our own consciences, we will not regain these rights without much suffering. I don’t want more suffering, I want less.
More freedom = less suffering.
THIS is the battle. Standing together NOW and saying, NO MORE! Please, please, please, join the fight! Say NO to any more government mandates, vaccine passports, or lockdowns. If you are told you must get the bio-injection, file for medical or religious exceptions. If you are rejected, force your employer to fire you. Then sue.
Together, we CAN reverse this terrible trend. Maybe not everywhere, but definitely, 100% we can, and WILL, stay free in the Free State of New Hampshire! Who is with me!?!
I was reminded out on a trail today that Nature is about decay and rebirth, but that it’s never too late to start down a new path!
Four years ago, at the age of 46, I was overweight, exhausted, and unwell.
I decided to reclaim my health, and I did! [Read more.]
Today, my gut biome is greatly healed, I’ve lost and kept off more than 50 lbs following an Ancestral low-carb lifestyle, I restarted my yoga and meditation practice, and I feel in balance with the world!
If you need inspiration, have questions, or want to learn more about The Art of Independence, follow me on social [INSTA, TWITTER, FACEBOOK] and find fresh content here at CarlaGericke.com.