The Kushi Summer Conference is being held at the Dolci Center in Basking Ridge, New Jersey. People come from all over the world to hear renowned speakers on macrobiotics share their knowledge with us. This year's presenters include Michio Kushi, Verne Varona, Tom Monte, Ed Esko, Bill Spear, Warren Kramer, Melanie Waxman, Denny Waxman and many others. It is difficult to juggle the full schedule of classes to be able to hear all my favorites. Fortunately most of the lectures are taped and you can buy the CDs to listen to at home. There are also classes each morning in yoga, Tai Chi, Do-In, Qigong, and Meditation. In the coming days Christina Pirello, Patricio Garcia De Paredes, Melanie Waxman and Deco Nakajima will be sharing their cooking expertise with us.
It is pouring cats and dogs when we arrive and gather with many old friends to receive our room assignments. This upscale hotel is a lovely venue for the Conference, with large cushy rooms and spacious meeting areas. KO and I head straight to the Kushi Store on the second floor to drop off the Macro Travel Friends t shirts, selling for a very reasonable twelve dollars this year, a real steal! My friend Kelly, a nutritionist in Maryland, has written an excellent book called Cure Your Child With Food and we have put them on sale at the store as well. The well stocked store is a macrobiotic's dream as its tables are brimming with snowy agar, large sacks of grains, juice sweetened cookies, books by our favorite authors, useful kitchen utensils and healthy seaweed. I buy a new cookbook by Bettina Zumdick, a teacher at the Kushi Institute, and promise myself to return tomorrow to peruse the goodies.
My favorite part of the Conference is reconnecting with friends I have not seen since last year. We greet each other warmly with hugs and kisses and compare notes from the last twelve months. Today , while waiting for a lecture to begin, I met a new friend from New Jersey and he shared his wealth of information regarding New Jersey shore vegan and macrobiotic friendly restaurants. I'm looking forward to a trip there to try them out. Everyone is very friendly and you never know if you will sit down with a person who cured their cancer, diabetes, heart problems or eczema with macrobiotics. The stories are motivating and help to reinforce the reasons I am following this path.
The food is already outstanding. Tonight's dinner is divided into a healing diet and the regular macrobiotic fare. On the menu is the creamiest roasted garlic polenta I have ever tasted, Red Lentil Loaf with Mushroom Gravy, steamed kale and many salad options. The brocoli soup is accompanied by sourdough croutons. For dessert, they offer a lemon poppy seed cupcake. We enjoy our food while having a lively conversation with a couple from Maryland who share their experiences taking cooking classes in Becket at the Kushi Institute.
After dinner there is a lecture with Tom Monte entitled Creating Peace- In Your Life, In Your Most Cherished Relationships, Community and World. The standing room only crowd is treated to a heartfelt dialogue on the importance of dealing with our anger and sadness before we can reach the stages of compassion, love and fulfillment. You can hear a pin drop in the room as we intently absorb Tom's crucial life lessons. He counsels, "If you are waiting for someone else to change then that is making your own happiness dependent on the other changing." The other person can not prevent us from having happiness any more and we need to pay attention to the tender victim in ourselves, face our anger and not let it fester into disease. There are many interesting lessons in Tom's wise words.
The evening ends with Michio Kushi, at eighty seven years young, welcoming us to the conference. Next Jessica Porter entertains us with her usual brand of humor while introducing the speakers for the weekend. It is always a treat to hear her come up with an anecdote about every presenter and put a funny spin on it.
Exhausted and excited we return to the room for some well needed sleep. Can't wait to see what they are serving for breakfast tomorrow and best of all, I don't have to cook for myself!
More tomorrow on Day Two.
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