Tragedy of the Commons | Oskar Eustis | George Monbiot | Invest in our CommonWealth

I’m from Pennsylvania, one of four States of the 52, which is a Commonwealth. I never really knew how that distinguished PA from any other state. I learned of the concept of the Commons through the writings of George Monbiot. He wrote this article published in the Guardian September 27th, 2017. Don’t let the rich get even richer on the assets we all share – It’s time for communities to seize back control of resources upon which their prosperity depends

Monbiot states that the commons has three main elements. “First a resource, such as land, water, minerals, scientific research, hardware or software. Second a community of people who have shared and equal rights to this resource, and organise themselves to manage it. Third the rules, systems and negotiations they develop to sustain it and allocate the benefits.” He goes on to state:

The commons have been attacked by both state power and capitalism for centuries. Resources that no one invented or created, or that a large number of people created together, are stolen by those who sniff an opportunity for profit…those who capture essential resources force everyone else to pay for access.”

What comes to my mind immediately is companies that for example take (extract/steal)  a region’s water, and then force the local people to pay for what they bottle. Or the fact that various individuals and companies throughout history who tried to buy, destroy or steal the plans of various individuals who designed medical or energy devices that could have provided a product to the public for almost no cost. Instead, they were hidden from public knowledge so that the perpetrators could make a profit through their own devices. By obscuring the competitor’s inventions, they were able to bank on their own goods or services.

Monbiot subsequently published essentially the same themed article in his blog Common Wealth on the 2nd of October, 2018. Entitled Common Wealth – Hope lies with a great, neglected sector of the economy, through which we can create a system that is neither capitalist nor state communist.”

Commons is managed for wellbeing.

Tragedy of the Commons video by Nicholas Amendolare

The Tragedy of the Commons is eloquently described in this video. Basically if a community consumes a common resource too fast for regeneration to occur, people must choose between restricting their own consumption for the good of the community, for if they continue to consume at a rate that satisfies their immediate “self-interest”, there may be dire consequences later. That seems to be what is occurring on the earth presently. However, in terms of consuming and/or spoiling resources, the fact is that it isn’t really the individuals who make up communities who are necessarily at fault. In the last several generations, the resources and supply has for the most part been in the control of a very few. This has upset the balance and tweaked the demand curve.

We’ve gotten into a weird state of affairs in the USA, which is being replicated all over the globe. It used to be the land of effulgent possibilities. Labeled the Land of Opportunity, the American Dream. The land of entrepreneurship. The place where people could be assured that their ideas and efforts could be strengthened and developed. But the dream has been taken hostage by just a small percentage of individuals and groups, who have been able to use their money to buy their passage, gobble up competitors, purchase the media and think tanks to hurl out propaganda and crush anyone in their way.

In the last decades, as a friend says the last 70 years, the emphasis in the States has become top-heavy towards enriching the industrial interests, which has coincided with buttressing the military. A handful of people have been controlling these interests. The process has downright gutted many of the small businesses. Anyone who has been alive long enough in the United States of Amnesia, has seen their local hardware stores, five & dime stores, pharmacies, grocery stores, local boutiques etc, in which you knew the families of the people who owned and operated them, disappear. Now Big Box Stores like Walmart have replaced them. They can’t compete. I mention this in my other blog. https://digesthis.wordpress.com/2018/12/06/the-photo-ark-half-earth-project-plastic-ocean-dolphin-deaths-sonar-seismic-tests-patriotism-to-finance-the-military-industrial-gdp-ecocide/

Robert Reich explains in this video THE MONOPOLIZATION OF AMERICA: The Biggest Economic Problem You’re Hearing Almost Nothing About about how this phenomenon evolved. He says that a century ago there were anti-trust laws preventing any company from getting too large, but that these protections disappeared during the Reagan years. Reich points out that the less businesses there are in competition, the more the few who are in control can create their own prices as well as the wages. No competitor, no problem, for those making the rules.

Robert Reich Monopolization of America Health Care Monopolies 2016

Robert Reich Monopolization of America Walmart Drives Down Workers Wages

The USA according to what businesses ‘control’ each state. Walmart Nation, Health Care Boeing

 

What we need to do is to step by step, reinvest in our own communities, and take the tools to work side by side. Forming relationships with people and seeing our own work and voices mirrored, empowering people to be intimately tied to their own land. I’m living in a town next to the birthplace of the industrial revolution. A number of people told me how toxic the river was that flowed through this town. The townspeople and any other life that had been here certainly suffered, while the industries reaped financial rewards. The trend in the USA has been for cities to clean up their waterfronts and create common spaces that people can enjoy. That is their heritage, to walk and commune freely with others in public spaces. That’s what I’m talking about here. Except not just riverfront property. I’m talking about fields and woods surrounding towns, forests on the periphery, about national parks, about creating once again and maintaining spaces that are naturally the habitat of other life forms. About taking picks to break up parking lots and creating community gardens instead. About people engaging in these public spaces, with love of the land, connectedness among the people and the desire to protect and allow the land and all the other life forms to flourish.

What I understand in the idea of ‘taking back’ the commons – is for community members, you and I, to have joint ownership of the land; for community members to be entitled to make decisions on how best to use this resource and to together create community works, community theatre, community stores, community gardens, community farms. Because when something is shared and invested in physically and monetarily, one will put effort, love and pride into maintaining it. We have had this tremendous land grab by companies, private sectors, who own vast stretches of land which, one would think, should rightfully be a heritage of the people who walk on the earth. So if the people collectively owned these swaths of land, fields, forests, grasslands, natural parks and so forth, then we the people would be engaged in participating in protecting it. It would be something that belonged to the people, and therefore, instead of being neglected or some other owner reaping vast rewards while the local populations received little, the people could benefit from either choosing to create fields, community gardens, parks with fruit and nut trees. In other words, this would deliver the ownership to the people and the wealth of the land would be valued by the people and recirculated among the people, not trickled off to enrich an owner far away.

Oskar Eustis TED Talk
Why theater is essential to democracy

I had the pleasure of listening to Oskar Eustis, the director of Hamilton, speak at a salon coordinated by the Athenaeum in Providence, Rhode Island. His words echoed the same concepts, of the need to bring back community theatre and arts and take back the country from all who have been dispossessed and cheated. The idea of power coming from below, from the community. He launched the audience with his humor and great storytelling into the past, to the first theatre and the fist actors of ancient Greek history. He mentioned Thespis, the first person ever to appear on stage and Aeschylus, the father of tragedy. He mentioned that it was the Persians who brought to the stage for the first time – not just one actor donning various masks – but two actors to stand side by side on the stage. This new perspective, with dialogue revealing that there could be more than one isolated truth, but a dialectic in which a discourse between two or more people holding different points of view could establish a truth through reasoned arguments, happened to coincide with the beginnings of Democracy at about this same time period.

Eustis stated that the Truth is dialectical. Precedent to Hegel’s dialectic, dialogue asks the audience to listen to two points of view, recognizing that each lead to the truth. Thus theatre, storytelling in its beginnings, came with this perception of each person having a voice. And this recognition through theatre, precipitated Democracy.

Oskar spoke at length about how bringing the theatre to the public, to allow actors and non actors to participate, empowers people. Project Discovery, which Trinity created is theatre of, for and by the people. He mentioned that creativity is inherent in all people, and that it is human to have the desire to create. Some people have had more practice. Creativity simply needs to be nourished.

Oskar Eustis spoke of the fate of the marketplace. That the economy and technology of the last decades has turned its back on the people. Wall Street and corporations operating in this global economy have robbed people of jobs. As the jobs disappeared – outsourced to other countries for cheaper labor – it has pulled communities apart. He talked of revitalizing communities through investing in projects such as theatre. When people can see their own story and speak their own story, they are empowered to share their stories.

Oskar states that “It is our job to knit this country back together, not to be right.”

Oskar Eustis’ TED Talk weaves together the idea of a public theatre, common voice and a democratic government.

Greta’s powerful speech to Swedish people before the Parliament

‘We Have Not Come Here to Beg World Leaders to Care,’ 15-Year-Old Greta Thunberg Tells COP24. “We Have Come to Let Them Know Change Is Coming. We can no longer save the world by playing by the rules,” says Greta Thunberg, “because the rules have to be changed.”

There’s nothing more important than recognizing that change can happen. Coming through education and arts and activities within your own communities. We can drive that change. If one young girl has already sparked and inspired students in Australia, in another continent, this can ripple. We need to look very, very hard, at what we are choosing, so that we don’t lose what is most precious. You may think your own immediate children are the most precious, but what if there are no trees, woods, grasses, available food, no clean oceans or rivers or lakes, or air, and no other life? It is an astoundingly clear choice to me. We’ve got to make some changes, and we’re going to do this together. And plenty of people are pointing the way, and your own ideas will be as valuable as anyones, collaboratively we will create this change.

My friend Loren Booda states, “Start with hope, funding of positive efforts to return nature and, with native education, make everyone responsible for and aware of their use of resources. The major problem? Almost all of us usually put other needs or wants before the environment.” Full-circle back to The Tragedy of the Commons.

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook & music composition

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December 10th, 2018 Carol Keiter

Innsæi – The Power of Intuition | Nature Is Our Silent Witness

“The biggest obstacle to intuition is noise. We are bombarded with information and distraction all the time, and in particular, noise. The noise of the external world is muting our attention to the internal world.”

~ Malidoma Patrice Somé

Innsæi – The power of Intuition is an inspiring and thought-provoking documentary film in English with Icelandic subtitles. It was made by two Icelandic women Hrund Gunnsteinsdottir and Kristín Ólafsdóttir. They tell their story by distilling wisdom and insights from divers sources. They eloquently reveal that the modern western tendency is for people to disconnect from themselves and one another, ironically, the more that they think they’re connecting, through their devices.

Innsæi – The Power of Intuition

INNSAEI O PODER DA INTUIÇÃO DOCUMENTÁRIO 2016 COMPLETO LEGENDADO HD

Insight and intuition comes through that silent connection between one’s thoughts and feelings. It’s an emotional connection. One person interviewed mentions that 95% of our mental processes are unconscious. When interacting with another person, our brains process most of the information from implicit cues we pick up unconsciously; through gesture, tone of voice, choice of word, facial expression. Intuition lies outside of the things that we’re consciously aware of, yet can play an important role in guiding us, if we allow it to, by not being so enormously distracted with information and noise.

Innsæi Documentary Film

The richness of our lives emotionally, psychologically and spiritually emerges through the wealth of diversity of plants and animals which make up the life system of our earth. We are part of a huge, fabulously intricate and awesome network of life woven together. The more we tune into it, the more human built distractions will diminish. We need to cherish and support the entire living system and do our best to safeguard it. The refrain of Joni Mitchel’s song Big Yellow Taxi couldn’t be more accurate. “don’t It always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone, they paved paradise, put up a parking lot”.

Nature is our Silent Witness, Intuition needs the vocabulary and many languages of nature

An excellent synopsis of the documentary film here in Zeitgest Films informs you that the film makers “Hrund Gunnsteinsdottir and Kristín Ólafsdóttir go on a soul-searching, global journey to uncover the art of connecting within in today’s world of distraction, disconnection and stress.”

This writer plucked out a lot of the important points of the film.

Intuition plays through the creative insight of the right hemisphere of the brain that coordinates information coming from many senses. In a recent conversation with a girl I met, I was talking about seeing through the heart and that we have a lot of neurons in our heart and gut. She brought up the fact that when speaking with people regarding sensitive topics like ‘climate crisis’, it’s extremely important what words one chooses. A word is linked to an emotional connection. A person’s attention may be immediately diverted because of their preconceived notion and association of that word. A word can cause someone to tune out, because of what they associate it with, or cause them to respond, because it is integral to their own way of responding to life – their operating system. Unconsciously, we label and draw conclusions from our associations with the word.

The mention of the performance artist Marina Abramovic who drew a tremendous response when people lined up to sit on a chair facing her, to look into her eyes. Her complete presence in the moment became this clear reflection into the person’s psyche. In that silence they are seeing themselves. “Something people rarely take time to do”, she says. In quietness with no disruptive waves, as she breathed slowly and aligned her attention and eyes to meet those of the stranger before her, people would in this silent communication melt into tears, or flicker into rage. She advises people to go into the unknown, to enter into a different pattern. Making mistakes is the way we grow.

The joy in his eyes and complete confidence in his tone of voice made me eager to attend to every single utterance. The more he said, the more it resonated. Malidoma Patrice Somé is an African elder who was interviewed. He was born in a Dagara community in Dano, Burkina Faso.

Malidoma Patrice Somé

He talks of our need for nature, that “Nature is a Silent Witness to our Intuition”. We couldn’t have intuition without nature. He wishes westerners would give credence to and have faith in their intuition, because this is how one connects with their past, present and future and makes sense of our own lives.

Somé says “The biggest obstacle to intuition is noise. We are bombarded with information and distraction all the time, and in particular, noise. The noise of the external world is muting our attention to the internal world.

He mentioned the Dagara tribe and I found this article written by a woman Sobonfu Somé, same name.

THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN: SPIRITUALITY AMONG THE DAGARA PEOPLE

These words in particular pulled me in. “In the Dagara tradition, the healers have you walk so they can see how your body moves. Is your body ready to deal with this or are you still in conflict? The other way that healing happens is in the context of a community. If someone comes down with a particular illness, it is not seen as that person’s problem. It is a problem of the community, because that person is actually the voice of what is deeper in the core, in the fabric of the community.”

Last evening while watching a show of ice skaters at an outdoor rink, I smiled and clapped for the cute, hopeful, aspiring and the excellent technical maneuvers. I endured some of the music, telling myself, this is what this performer chose. And then a former olympic female figure skater entered and I recognized the first two or three notes of Franz Schubert’s Ave Maria. My eyes welled with tears and continued for almost the duration of the piece. I can’t say I was feeling sad or that it was bringing up a reference to a specific event. To me it is one of those astoundingly touching songs, like “Beautiful World” in which the melody and voice convey something beyond words, into something that launches emotions with piercing clarity.

We all know that it is the music in films that determines how the audience will interpret a scene; to be lighthearted, comical, tense, melancholy or frightening. It’s the emotional impact of art, the intuitive, that opens the doors.

Take some time for quiet moments, to notice things and ponder. And especially to go into the unknown, the source of the known.

Meditate! Listen and observe.

Peace

Trees Reflected in Water | Faber Castell watercolor pencils

Here’s a new painting (progression) Trees Reflected in Water progression. I like to take pictures as I paint to show to an extent, my process.

Trees Reflected in Water Progression

 

 

I bicycled twice there, 8.8 miles roundtrip, and still hadn’t completed it. It gets dark too early and its a bit cold to sit outside, so I completed the last touches, mostly adding water, at home using photos I took  ––when the wind wasn’t blowing the reflecting into ripples as when I was painting.

Slater Mill Pawtucket Woonasquatucket river Providence

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I found this place by accident. I went off bicycling in a new direction, over an unfamiliar bridge and 4.4 miles later, found this place by accident. I found actually some lovely shrubbery too. I discovered these old buildings and a waterfall, then a trail. It’s the Slater Mill. It was empty the first time, the second time the parking lot was full – it happened to be the once a month that the historic house has a free tour.

Trees Reflected in Water

Borders on Vox | Johnny Harris Filmmaking & Journalism Excellence

Suddenly he was popping up on Facebook. He was in China and Hong Kong specifically for a while, now at the border between Columbia and Venezuela.

Johnny Harris Borders Senior Producer filmmaker_journalist

The theme Borders couldn’t be more appropriate in today’s world. I read that the senior producer of Border, Johnny Harris, has a BA in international relations from Brigham Young University and an MA in international peace and conflict resolution from American University, each based in Washington D.C.

Johnny Harris Borders Producer Filmmaker Journalist Vox

Here is his current most recent video, on the other side of the globe from China, in South America.

Why Colombia has taken in 1 million Venezuelans

 

I’m posting a blog about him so that more people can become aware of his series. I think he’s an excellent journalist, weaving in history, talking to people. I see that he asks locals with any historical information they deem appropriate to his videos, to offer their insights. He’s obviously got a nice tool, a camera attached to a drone which makes for some fantastic footage. And his series on Borders couldn’t be more appropriate at this time.

Autumn Colors Progression

I bicycled over to the Swan Point cemetery to check out the trees. I sat down as groups of wild turkeys wandered around. I completed this on a second sitting, November 8th.

Pictures of the latest painting progression

 

glue flower petals and leaves on bicycle

tiger paint
endangered species

 

 

as la catrina Day of the Dead

Autumn Nature Bliss | Sidewalk Leaf Imprints | Northeast North America

Hey, I have better quality images with my Canon digital camera, but haven’t had it on me on these days bicycling around. Only a phone with not so many dpi pixels, but great subject matter.

| Sidewalk Leaf Imprints | Northeast North America

exquisite colors

Sidewalk Leaf ImprintsAlong with all of the literally inspiring colors, I found these leaf imprints on the sidewalk of fallen leaves extraordinarily lovely!

Haunting Sidewalk Leave ImPrints

When You Do Nothing, You Are Part of the Problem

Sarah J. S. said this in her facebook post, and then I responded. I just decided to put it out there – un edited – beyond facebook.

Sarah J. S. says:

“Unless you are loud and explicit in your outrage, I consider you complicit in every death at the hands of another white terrorist, every suicide by a transgender American, every black person killed by law enforcement, every Latino child crying for her parents, every Brasilian forest cleared, every Sri Lankan cabinet member who gets sacked or killed, every German protester who’s maced in the forest, every journalist assassinated inside an embassy, EVERYTHING. All of it.

IF YOU ARE SILENT, YOU NO LONGER HAVE THE LUXURY OF THINKING YOURSELF “GOOD.” You simply aren’t a good person. You’re a comfortable person, but you are not good. You are the silent German neighbor in the 1930s who watched your childhood friend forced onto a train. You are the silent American in the 1960s who watched your neighbor return from the hospital with burns on her face.

And if you remain silent in 2018, you have made the decision, however tacit, to support the venomous hate that is galvanizing killers and burning holes into the fabric of humanity.

If you won’t stand proudly in your values, and if you won’t stand with humanitarians on the right side of history, I no longer understand you, and feel no remorse whatsoever in outing you as an oppressor and forcing you to stand in shame in your silence. Your implicit endorsement of oppression does not merit the peace of comfort.

Those of us who feel and respond to the pain of the world have been forced to feel discomfort for so long, while you have made our job harder by “staying out of politics.” Well, it’s not politics anymore, it’s life and death, and if you can’t be woken up enough to support life, may you find enough delusion to sustain you when they come for you—as they certainly will—and no neighbors come to your rescue.”

I respond.

I met Sarah J.S. when we were both participating in the http://placetob.org during the Paris climate talks. everyone there, from all over the world, were either there representing their countries who had already been devastated in the years preceding by global warming; from parts of the world feeling the brunt of the loss of their land to water or victims of massive storms- which most of the Global Northern hemisphere have been causing because of their appetites and demands for energy and comfort. There were people there who have gone all over the globe to do things to help people to help themselves, to stand up to industries and recognize that their forests are worth more alive, than dead, etc. we are living in a strange lie, in which incessant building and focus on profit, continues to wipe out community, compassion, empathy, connectedness (to one another and to nature and other life). The world is a big place, so that unless you know someone who is victimized by losing their access to clean water and air due to fracking or coal mining or oil spills, it just doesn’t really impact you. I grew up eating meat, driving in cars, living in a spacious home, when the word extinction was not used, it was a far off idea. Now, we live in a world in which everything is continually commodified – and it’s been sort of backed up with Christian ideology. The cows and pigs are there for humans to consume. We are, so the idea has been, at the top of the pyramid. We displaced the native Americans (but kept their names of territories as a nice gesture) and basically eradicated them. Native American indigenous people traditionally used only what they needed, and saw their connection and relationship to all of life – as something to honor. Western man has cut off any recognition of how they are part of a much larger web, in which all of this is splendor and awesome, and of which, man is only a small part. But humans have become so obsessive about material acquisition and domination, that they are just absolutely killing the planet and displacing all the life forms. The talk of walls, a border wall, is the most loathsome thing as far as all the OTHER LIFE FORMS ON THE PLANET WHO ACTUALLY DON’T HAVE POLITICAL BORDERS – THEY ARE ANIMALS THAT NORMALLY ROAM. WHAT THE FUCK PEOPLE? WHAT THE FUCK? every time some new mall or Wallmart or Costco or housing development, or highway cuts through land, it is killing off all the species. the idea of ever continuing to exploit oil and coal, or mines are just destroying habitats. the idea of minding the arctic or antarctic or bottom of the ocean, to just take, take, take and build, build build…is crippling every other species. we do not need new updated iPhones and computers and whatever in shorter and shorter generations. we have the capacity to do much more with our minds and hearts, and we are just continually seduced and misguided by media, and beguiled, yes, completely misinformed and used by political leaders. the billionaires club. All other life forms, people, air, water, land…are not valued as something worth alive, and left to be in its best form. we are fucking everything up as we continually build, increase square footage of homes, plow down trees, wipe out communal spaces, privatize, obsess about making a profit, obsess about acquiring things, relying more and more on the automobile, on comfort, on ease..okay well, I thought I’d add a few words to Sarah J.S.‘s

A letter to my sister | preciousness of life | Carl Sagan: freedom through scientific skepticism | Le Petit Prince

I was looking over my blog stats and saw someone read this, posted several years ago. I decided to post it again, since it’s relevant, from a moral and political standpoint – uh, yes, at one time I believe, the two were part of the same fabric. uh, now wait a minute, maybe morality and political leadership have rarely been paired, and that it is an exception! I mean, as long as royal leaders, and tyrants, and corporations have the reins, morality has little to do with the people who wish to maintain their power, control and profits.

Here’s the letter:
I am certainly happy to hear from you. Naturally I think about you every time that I enter the room to look at the lovely paper lanterns you hung for Mother’s birthday party and the teepee you constructed in the yard – which I‘m still raking! Memories of things people share and artifacts that they leave behind imbue all of these things with the spirit of the person. I am sorry that we had difficulties communicating at times. I have not been ‘above’ reacting emotionally to someone’s emotional reactions towards me. However, that doesn’t mean that I can not attempt to move beyond my reactions to reach out with more compassion and understanding.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of Le Petit Prince
The Little Prince

Antoine de Saint-Exupery was a pilot, and author of the remarkable children’s book, for adults, Le Petit Prince/ The Little Prince. There appear to be exceptions to this formidable quote, if the person happens to be morally repugnant and arrogant!

Le Petit Prince, written by Antoine Saint-Exupery
the Phenomenon

I went out with a family friend last night and afterwards, realized that he knows even more profoundly how precious life is, as he has lost both of his parents. Certainly, if we all had an acute awareness of death (sitting on our shoulders) – Carlos Castaneda style i.e. “the Teachings of Don Juan” – in each response to every moment, we would never be anything but kind to all people and creatures, at all times.

That sounds like a pretty heavy way to live. The context is not, to be continually fearful, but rather, continually present with the fact that every moment of life is precious. People need to accept the rights of others to be and perceive as they will. It is a rather large task, to put differences and competitiveness, jealousy, envy and judgments … aside. Yet it’s the only way for everyone to get along. (I just read in Salon dot com a rather scathing article about the writer Carlos Castaneda, saying that Don Juan was not only an astounding hoax, but that Castaneda went on to form a bizarre cult.) He nevertheless had strong poetic and spiritual points to emphasize in his writings.

It’s pretty much a life-long task, given the fact that all humans have a tendency to subjectively interpret and judge other peoples’ actions. I do it, we all do it, from personal complaints, grievances, expectations, disappointments on up to community and cultural, political and religious differences of interpretation, that result in the worst cases to prolonged wars and strife between ethnic groups and neighboring countries.

This appears to be one of the biggest challenges and aspirations for humankind; to look beyond differences and strive for understanding, compassion and kindness. The ‘tree-hugger/environmental activist side of me’ is kicking out judgements every time I see people’s actions or material opulence (not to mention hearing about plans for more gas drilling in the arctic etc.) which I perceive as offensive. I put them into a box I label offender/perpetrator; a personal judgement which is my own way of playing in the ‘us against them’ scenario. So, I’m as guilty as anyone. The obvious extreme is the fact that people are blowing each other up in the Middle East …. and that wars and conflicts and ominous actions of manipulation continue to proliferate worldwide, despite the fact that most humans have access to rather extraordinary tools.

We are technologically light years ahead of where we are emotionally!

As Carl Sagan mentions in this interview “A Way of Thinking” in which he delivers insights into the dangers in our present culture; based on the fact that we’re a science and technology-based culture, the inner workings of which few comprehend. That puts us in a position in which we are in danger of being more easily manipulated.

Sagan points out that science is a way of skeptically interrogating the universe. And that it’s dramatically important for each of us to ask skeptical questions about everything, particularly to those in authority; otherwise we are up for grabs by the next charlatan, political or religious, that comes along. He mentions that Thomas Jefferson said that people need to be educated in order to practice their skepticism, otherwise ‘we don’t run the government, the government runs us’.

Carol Keiter the blogger

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook & music composition

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Red Maple Brilliance October 8th, Autumn 2018

I started doing this series of Faber-Castell watercolor pencils paintings a few years ago in the Santa Fe National Forest in New Mexico. At the time, I was living in a cabin adjacent to Bill Light’s home which he built for his daughter. I stayed there a few months, absolutely gorgeous woods. I’d go hiking with Luna, Bill’s dog, who’s not so large but very capable. I loved going on walks with Luna, and she loved going on walks with me. Beautiful pristine forest. Luna encountered bears a number of times….and she barked them up a tree each time. A very brave, confident dog, even though she was aging.

Here are several paintings, showing the progression from the first sitting and then completed in the next. Below is a flickr link to paintings done with (watercolor) colored-pencils 1,000 feet above Santa Fe, New Mexico elevation 7,198 feet, in the National Forest – where I’ve gone on walks with Luna, the owner’s dog

Luna my former companion on my walks to the woods

red maple signed

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s the latest Faber-Castell watercolor pencil painting! That’s a mouth full. Red Maple in Autumn BrillianceRoger Willams Park, Providence, RI
Oct. 8th

Red Maple Autumn Brilliance

the red maple subject

I went out Sunday deciding to bicycle to Roger Williams park for a change (I’d been going to the cemetery close to where I live). Well I saw this fantastically brilliant Maple as I was coming in the one entrance…cycled around to other places…and wound up coming back to this cuz no other tree matched its brilliance at this time. I then couldn’t wait to return, I couldn’t get it completed that day as the dusk crept in. Then I had to carry it on my back in my pack while I danced for hours, running into the night time shows under the bridge of all these marching bands for the Pronk Fest, which was just fantastic. There were colored lights illuminating the bridge, and crowds cheering the bands, and the final band, final song was one which had a lovely and simple tune, so that many people there in this echo chamber sang this over and over (me included). A very lovely heart felt song archipello, and everyone after numerous repetitions, all magically stopped and cheered at exactly the same time. Singing this was one of those life’s special moments.

Happy World Animal Day | Car-a-holics in Northern Hemisphere Affect Global Disasters

Today is World Animal Day. In fact, with the climate collapse induced by human actions, mostly in the Northern Hemisphere of the Globe and among the wealthier nations, many of the populations (certainly not all) oblivious to how their energy habits are triggering these worldwide weather extremes and just basically destroying so many habitats of creatures.

Happy World Animal Day

Share a Happy World Animal Day

 

 

Donggala at the epicenter of the quake and Palu just south in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia

 

 

I am very sorry, that once again the archipelago of Indonesia has been struck a week ago with another tremendous earthquake and tsunami, causing devastation among the populations of many towns. My heart goes out to the people and families who have lost people, animals and treasures that they love.

Global Solutions New thinking on the most pressing issues facing people and the planet.

Sumatran Rhino Rescue National Geographic

 

The transportation sector makes the highest hit presently. I’m about to write to Senator Whitehouse of Rhode Island, whom a passer by whom I asked if he ‘believed in global warming, human induced global warming’ responded saying that this Senator is aware and supportive of this issue. That’s after to my bafflement, I dined among two white American men who each DID NOT. This circa 85 year old man I intercepted as he walked with mail in his hand towards a mail box said, yes indeed. I mentioned I had written to both the RI mayor and governor regarding the atrocious number of people I find of all walks of life, ages and race, sitting in their cars nonchalantly with the engines idling. This man said, well, that’s part of it, but it really is the entire oil industry and these dirty industries…which is when he mentioned that this Senator Whitehouse is actually not blindly blithely ignoring the issue because of being in the pocket of dirty industries.

A Yale study revealing What the World Thinks About Climate Change emphasizes, “Limiting climate change will involve major shifts in public policy and individual behavior regarding energy, transportation, consumption, and more, note the researchers. Likewise, they said, preparing for and adapting to climate change impacts will require changes in current practices, and governments will need public support for and engagement in climate change solutions. This new research suggests that gaining public engagement will vary from country to country, depending on local culture, economy, education and other factors, said the researchers.”

Well, if people would just figure out a way to find alternative energies, putting some solar on your house, opting to ride a bicycle more, walk more, drive less and interact with the beauty of nature and recognize that when it comes down to it, most people go ‘on vacation’ to go be around nature. It’s the most lovely and formidably delightful thing you can do > to be among trees and animals and birds and immerse yourself in nature >for your physical, emotional and spiritual health. Spiritual health? What’s that? It’s recognizing with AWE how beautiful this planet is and in fact, you can’t purchase anything that will come close to intelligence, beauty and diversity and spectacularly fascinating creatures that are all around us.

What? You have to get out of your car? Your machine? What? You have walk without looking down at your phone? Look up from your phone and take your headphones off? What? You can do it? Try it for a block? Then two, and try for a real challenge to actually start conversing with the people around you.

Audubon Birds and Climate Change Report

Now having lived in Europe several times, I can say, now that I’m in New England of the USA, that the BIGGEST difference, is how disconnected people are with one another and nature. In Montpellier, Nice, and Paris France, in Rome, Italy, in Berlin, Germany certainly in the Netherlands and Scandinavia….

p e o p l e    w a l k   a r o u n d        they promenade, they hang out in public places that are designed with beauty to attract people to hang out. they promenade. That’s why promenade is a noun and a verb, a street and the act of casually walking, with not necessarily a specific destination in mind…people lingering in cafes on narrow streets into the sidewalks.

I told people last evening who actually were by two benches, that the walkways and area by the water, if it were in Europe, would be packed, all of the time, just as the WaterFire festival brings. All summer long, and believe me, I traversed the area by the water…and yes, there were gondola rides, and Providence does have a lot of summer outdoor concerts and festivals, but typically this riverside area, is eerily e m p t y. what? why?

Americans are car-a-holics. They are comfort-a-holics, energy hogs….and guess who is suffering the most? Every other person and creature on the planet, both two feet away from your idling exhaust pipe and insistence on driving everywhere along with the lack of walking infrastructure (thank you automobile and oil industry). And most of the local animals habitats and pathways are being paved by the minute – gotta have those highways, more roads, more building, more pavement. And the fires on every continent and radical storms and recent tsunami are without a doubt, due to the dirty industries feeding this demand for comfort. People become indignant with the thought of having to consider losing some of the efficiency and comfort that they have. Actually, the cool way would be to invest (your homes, your actions and your lifestyles) to let a few other creatures and cultures around the globe live, who are getting hit the hardest.

Oh yeah, so it’s world animal day. It just so happens that if people don’t have the time, or patience or are two self important to adjust their lifestyles or switch to supporting cleaner, sustainable energies, transportation, eating habits and purchasing practices, then when you go on vacation and there are no more animals or birds….whaddya gonna do, go into virtual reality to ‘pretend’?

regenerative cultures Wendell Berry learn what is good for the world

We have to do this together, we have to acknowledge that EVERYTHING has to change. The entire way I was raised in a little town in Pennsylvania in the USA was comfort, driving, eating meat, buying new clothes each new school season, keeping up with the Kardashians…WTF? You can be decked out in the fanciest clothing and stepping into your oversized car, but if you are overweight from bad habits, too exhausted to even want to read or pursue new information about the wonders of this world, but would rather take out, drive, dismiss, ignore, pop a pill and not be in the present moment, moment after moment of appreciating life and all of the life that also shares this planet, then what exactly are you living for?

Gosh, I think that this planet, and interacting and meeting new people and observing the incredible nature of which we are a part, is the most spectacular thing. It can’t get any better.

Please think about how your choices are affecting your immediate environment and the most biodiverse habitats on the other side of the globe. Human over population and indulgence has to slow down.

Natural Capital Project : Our Relationship with Nature

It just so happens to be the World Animal Day today, and because I love and appreciate all creatures, tiny and humongous as adorable and with the right to live, I just had to let off steam writing this. I hope it triggers a twitch of a thought to change an action.

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook & music composition

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I bicycled en train de faires mes affaires partout, I road all over town and to the next state circa 20 mi. greeting people with the info of this special day.

Faber-Castell Watercolor Eastern Hemlock vor Sugar Maple

 

These Eastern Hemlock leaves dangling before a Sugar Maple was done with Faber-Castell watercolor pencils in two sittings – sketching it out and adding water the first day, then adding some more texture and dimension today, September 30th, 2018 in Swan Point Cemetery in Providence, Rhode Island.

 

Flickr Eastern Hemlock vor Sugar Maple Painting Progression

At the end of the 1st session of two

Eastern Hemlock vor Sugar Maple Swan Point Cemetery

My father painted and so did his mother.

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook & music composition

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Black Oak Paper Birch Trees and Sunlight Progression | Swan Point Cemetery

Using Faber Castell watercolor pencils, I sketched and painted at Swan Point Cemetery in Providence, Rhode Island…among the living & the dead

Black Oak Paper Birch Swan Point Cemetery Faber Castell Watercolor pencils

 

 

Black Oak Paper Birch Swan Point cemetery – skipped the tomb stones,  just focused on the trees.

 

Trees and Sunlight

 

skipped the tomb stones and just focused on the trees.

Black Oak Paper Birch Tree Progression

 

 

Definitely more concerned about the living people than the dead ones I might come across there. Though I respect their place of rest, it is full of life. Almost every tree there is meticulously labeled to appreciate what kind it is.

 

 

Flickr Black Oak Paper Birch watercolor progression

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook & music composition

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blogger, portrait drawer, painter, photographer, musician, composer

Rise for Climate | September 8th | Speak Out Walkabout

Rise for Climate global action September 8th, 2019

Rise for Climate, Jobs, and Justice: USA Highlight Photos
350.org writes:
“On September 8, 2018, more than 30,000 people rose up for climate action, jobs, and justice in San Francisco — alongside more than 250,000 people in more than 90 countries around the world. We rose to demand our elected officials at all levels of government, everywhere step up and join us in building the just, bold climate solutions people and the planet need. And it was incredible. Check out some of the best photos from Rise actions in San Francisco and across the US here. (Photo credits: Survival Media Agency, unless otherwise noted.) Check out even more of the best photos from all over the world.

Why? Because we share this planet.

Go out into the streets and participate.

All of this is preceding the Global Climate Action Summit

Global Climate Action Summit Sept 12-14, 2018 San Francisco, CA

We humans produce noise pollution constantly: beeping cars to lock them, revving motors, sitting in cars with engines idling contributing to rising CO2 levels.

Unaware, uneducated, uninformed, peoples habits collectively are damaging the planet and affecting other animals’ habitats.

I will be dead in 50 years, but your children and their children will not.

What exactly do you want them to inherit? A completely deforested, paved planet with only a hint of other life forms other than humans? The lack of humans to realize how their independent actions contribute collectively to the destruction of the earth and the habitats of other creatures is beyond nearsighted. It is reprehensible. I have said everything I have wanted to say in previous blogs. I have pointed to other writers such as George Monbiot Incompetence By Design, who tells the truth.

Charles Eisenstein We are Interbeings Anything happening in the world happens to us

We are not here on this planet to buy and build. There’s something way more delightful: creating, art, music, storytelling and community.

We opted in to this life style, we can opt out and demonstrate a better way.

Helen Keller quote security is a superstition

Helen Keller Life is a daring adventure or nothing

Small back pack and messenger bag.

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Philip Wollen : Animals Should Be Off The Menu debate | Subtitles in 18 languages

Philip Wollen speech Crimes of Humans
Animals Off the Menu

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook & music composition

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blogger, portrait drawer, painter, photographer, musician, composer

Faber Castell Watercolor Pencils Painting | European Beech Tree | Swan Point Cemetery

Here’s a new Faber Castell watercolor pencil painting I did of this lovely
European Beech Tree at Swan Point Cemetery in Providence, Rhode Island

Flickr European Beech Tree

Faber Castell watercolor pencil painting European Beech Tree

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook & music composition

The PayPal donation button functions in Safari and Firefox, however is broken in Chrome.

Carol sitting under the trees

Let’s Act Differently-Embrace All Life-Change Habits-Incite Responsibility-Share Incentives

I am sending this letter today, right now, to one after another individual and group on the list included at the bottom. Talk about complete transparency. I want each to realize who all the recipients are, so that they may also add to the list. I need a job, and this is what comes to mind; gathering many to coordinate education at the grass roots level, that all of us can participate in.

I’d like to work with you in starting a global, grass-roots educational campaign – coordinated between all – re: ecological emergency; informing and inspiring public response to changing habits and actions.

Hi, 

I would like to work with you towards shifting peoples’ perceptions from complacency to fully recognizing how their actions and habits make an impact on their immediate surroundings and cumulatively affect climate change. Offering education and incentives that people can relate to, to guide them to think and act differently. An edutainment campaign which reaches to the public to give them a voice, through asking them to participate in providing ideas, questions, answers and listening to their responses. The idea, that by allowing people to engage and participate, they will feel more connected, more empowered and motivated, more responsible, and feel excited and involved as they watch how their messages like waves, ripple to bring other people together. 

I don’t believe anything can happen unless everyone is involved. That’s why I’m writing to each of the (individuals and organizations) resources of information I’ve valued and whose messages I’ve shared. Altogether about 40 at the moment. In fact, I’ve just decided to include the entire list of who I’m writing to, so that each of you can fill in and add some more people or groups to the list; who may in fact be more pivotal and effective in initiating this. I’m a female American who loves to write, draw portraits, paint trees and landscapes, play piano and bass guitar, and use computer music programs to compose electronic music. My compositions often incorporate the sounds of different creatures: whales, dolphins, penguins, insects and birds, so far.

I am ready right now (as I will probably have no housing nor money to pay rent in a matter of weeks and am able and willing to relocate virtually anywhere on the planet) to join a movement that coordinates education to raise awareness and offer guidelines towards immediate action. I believe that by working together, across individual and organizational boundaries, across disciplines, that we could engage the public to respond, as if life on our planet depended on it. Well, because it does. Complacency or lack of information has no place. Leaders and polluters will not inform. Therefore, though the odds may be dramatically against us (comfort over change), we could nevertheless try to inspire a movement of actions from the ground up, for each of us to collectively change some habits, that may actually gather so much momentum that people will start to care about what BIG energy hogs and polluters are doing, and BEGIN to speak out to them. New habits are difficult to start, but if everyone starts to really engage because the same messages are rippling out to the public globally by a team of people who are echoing what you and your collaborators have improvised, there is no telling how a critical mass of people with awareness and action and their heart into it, may start to make this grass roots message really move. 

The idea is to instigate people to re-define their relationship to the planet and its life forms and inspire them to re-imagine a dramatically different relationship to all of life, in which humans act responsibly as guardians to the plants and creatures with whom we share the planet. Messages which convey the realization that our greatest treasure is the life that surrounds us, supports us and delights us on earth; containing inspirational guidelines as to how we can change our habits, to live in harmony with other life forms and feel their value; the natural cycles, beauty of flora and fauna and fertility of the earth. You could say I’m an idealist. 

I’m primarily concerned with the loss of well, everything, all life with which we could live in harmony. Defenseless species of plants and animals lose habitats through the encroachment of humans, their residual noise, air and water pollution, chemical poisoning and the formidable elephant in the room, global warming, for which human behavior and industry are responsible. A trend which could collapse all systems on earth that have sustained life as we have known it. Given, Americans are the biggest energy abusers, without recognizing their contribution through the demands they put on having ease and comfort. By its nature, the capitalist formula is based on ever increasing profits, measuring success through the GDP, without factoring whatsoever, the health and well-being of all systems on the planet. This perception and motif has been perpetuated through the mendacity of those wishing to uphold it, in their allegiance to profit. We could actually shift our awareness to valuing deeply every single species as part of the labyrinth of life on this planet which we share. Effectually shifting from the notion of primacy of humans, to one valuing and being guardians to the sovereignty of all life. 

I speak conversational German, French and Spanish, pretty close to fluent. I love to communicate. I’m presently available to relocate anywhere. I live minimally, acquire a bicycle wherever I live, have no dependents and am healthy, strong and resilient. I gained new perspectives quite different from how I was brought up in central Pennsylvania, though I’ve gathered quite different perceptions of the world through having lived in a variety of quite alternative communities (New York city, Washington D.C., Taos, New Mexico, San Francisco, California, Berlin, Germany where I lived for 7 years altogether, Paris and Montpellier, France where I lived last year for 7 months. I’m adaptable. I’m also a person who has all my life been able to walk up to strangers, approach people and begin conversations. There are plenty of other people who with the incentive to save the planet, would be happy to do the same. I have a strong appetite of curiosity and creative drive to communicate. I have to admit that many of my blogs and music need to be more concise to be more easily approachable. I’m working on delivering more elegant and simple message. I also think vlogs are the way to go, more powerful and compelling, with images and music for people who don’t have the time or patience to read.

My dream is that outspoken individuals and organizations like yourself would actually stretch across each of their own boundaries and work together to create a resoundingly clear and transparent message and movement. A message that moves people emotionally to act, because of how overwhelmingly obvious and compelling it is. And a message that is spread through teams of people who go out into the streets to talk with people and collect information from the public. Messages that are informative, humorous, and elicit community participation. I can help you to create this message, I can’t do it on my own. We can do it together.

Below are links to my blogs, music and book trailer. I am in search of the best fit.

I came upon this quote when I was writing an article in 2003 which I just re-located on my HD. This from an Adbusters article in March-April 2003 Issue, “our first problem is one of denial. (and that) our crisis is not fundamentally one of technology, but one of the mind, will and spirit.” The author wrote that our ” denial must be met with a world-wide ‘perestroika’, predicated on the admission of failure: the failure of economics, which became disconnected from life; the failure of our politics, which lost sight or the moral roots of our commonwealth; the failure of science, which lost sight of the essential wholeness of things; and the failure of all of us as moral beings, who allowed these things to happen because we did not love deeply and intelligently enough.”  

With heart, intuition and intent,

Carol Keiter

carolkeiter@gmail.com

(720) 243-2953

skype:  carol_keiter

social networks:

http://www.facebook.com/carol.keiter

http://carolkeiter.tumblr.com

résumé:

https://carolkeiter.wordpress.com/2010/12/24/curriculum-vitae-portfolio

portfolio:

https://carolkeiter.wordpress.com/2010/11/23/parcel-of-my-portfolio

blogs:

https://carolkeiter.wordpress.com/

http://digesthis.wordpress.com/

I searched under the themes of environment and happiness in each of my blogs, which resulted in several pages in each consolidating articles on these subjects. 

https://digesthis.wordpress.com/?s=environment

https://carolkeiter.wordpress.com/?s=environment

https://digesthis.wordpress.com/?s=Happiness

https://carolkeiter.wordpress.com/?s=happiness

ebook trailer:

https://carolkeiter.wordpress.com/2013/05/23/final-metamorphosis-of-the-ebook-trailer-for-adora-vitali-a-spin-on-the-matter-of-motion/

music:

https://soundcloud.com/more_nomadbeatz/sets

https://www.reverbnation.com/nomadbeatz

http://www.myspace.com/nomadbeatz

podcast:

https://deliciousmedicinalfood.wordpress.com

Recipients as of August 24^th 2018:  

Alternatiba
Avaaz
Beautiful Solutions Lab
Bill Maher
Bill McKibben 350.org
Brian Thomas Swimme – Center for the Story of the Universe
Center for Biological Diversity
Charles Eisenstein – The More Beautiful World
Climate Warriors
Collective Evolution
Dalai Lama
Daniel Pinchbeck – 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl
David Wolfe – Environmental Defense Fund
Defenders of Wildlife
Democracy Collaborative
Democracy Now Amy Goodman
DJ Spooky – That Subliminal Kid
Earth Guardians
Earthling Ed
Elon Musk
Gabor Maté
Gar Alperovitz – Democracy Collaborative
George Monbiot
Global Climate Action – Climate Network
Greenpeace
Interfaith Power and Light
International Animal Rescue
James Gustave Speth – World Resources Institute WRI
Jeremy Narby – Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge
Joe Brewer
Jon Stuart
Michael Moore
Naomi Klein
National Geographic
National Resource Defense Council – NRDC
Next System Project
Noam Chomsky
PlaceToB – Paris COP21
Pope
Prince Ea
Rob Brezsny
Russell Brand
Save Animals From Extinction
Stephen Colbert
Trevor Noah
Vandava Shiva
WildEarth Guardians
WWF – Nikhil Advani – WWF Lead Specialist, Climate, Communities and Wildlife

Sunsets Swans & Clouds

Photographs of Sunsets Swans & Clouds Providence, Rhode Island July 2018

Sunsets Swans & Clouds
Providence Rhode Island July 2018

I ride bicycle but also have been slowing down to walk, particularly along streets with really old majestic trees, properties that value their foliage, and light up the graceful branches of bushes and trees, because obviously they are of HUGE value. I slow down to take it all in, and love especially to here the cricket chorus.

I’ve found a few places that I just absolutely love the trees that the people have kept in their grandiose properties. So glad that I listen and smell and pay attention to details.

So glad that I tune in to this, rather than a phone.

Social Hazard | Cellphone Compulsion Chalk Series | Cellphonitis

itis suffix state of mind compared to dis ease

 

Sure, I have a cell phone, although to save money, I don’t have a plan, and only get internet access when I know the password of a local site where I happen to be.

I use the internet and look at Facebook, where I read articles, comments and post things, and typically turn FB off when I’m working on writing. By the way, work for which I do not get paid.

 

However, I see an extraordinary amount of people, mostly in their 20’s (although there is by no means an age limit) walking around the College Hill area by Brown University looking down at their phones. If they aren’t, they have headphones on. Many have blue tooth speakers in their ears. Invariably I rarely see anyone who isn’t walking ALWAYS with a phone in their hand.

What? Always wired? Never simply present in the moment with one’s own thoughts and sensing the world around them? Most joggers also are adjusting their pockets where their phone bounces or are running with the phone in their hand. I heard a long time ago that one should not run listening to music with headphones; not because of the danger of not being aware of one’s surroundings, but because the blood is pumping harder while running and loud music could damage ear drums.

Anyway, here’s the beginning of my series.

ideas about cell phone compulsion

Paper and chalk images of people looking down at their glowing blue phone with blue bluetooth speaker.

cellphonitis series on paper

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And some more.

 

downtown_shavedheadgirl

downtown_post naked woman beneath

 

 

 

 

My idea was to do something along this line.

cellphonitis series on paper oblivious to surroundings

evolution of man

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unplug Turn It Off Tune In

 

 

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook & music composition

The PayPal donation button functions in Safari and Firefox, however is broken in Chrome.

Carol sitting under the trees

I’ll be continually adding images.

Caught my Eye…One Year Later | While Looking over Blogs

It wasn’t till a year later, glancing over what blogs were viewed, from what countries, making corrections, just looking….that I noticed this image.

I hadn’t noticed my shadow as I took the picture.

Title, because of the love portrayed between myself, the photographer and the tree I stopped to admire.

and really hadn’t noticed till i looked more closely how the bark’s texture and shadows and form of the tree creates quite a real, perfectly angled and proportioned body melding with the tree.

 

Here, I’ll accentuate it a bit.  Kind of magical no?

outlined shadow of blogger, photographer carol Keiter gold

and again

 

 

photoshop outline of shadow merging with contours of tree green

I changed it from this version with the pointier chin.

Outlining using photoshop the image I see through the shadow and tree bark and lines.

 

Kind of ironic, no, that the blog was about Being Intensely Present, and I missed seeing this!

Be Intensely Present

Donations for Carol Keiter’s writing, eBook, music composition and art, gratefully accepted!

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Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook & music composition

Carol Keiter contact

blogger, portrait drawer, painter, photographer, musician, composer

My 2nd letter to the Mayor and Governor | Establish anti-idling laws. Inform the Public. Research it. You are in a leadership position. Use it.

Establish anti-idling laws, restrict air conditioning units, establish no driving zones

I live in Providence, RI. I am a bicyclist, which provides me with direct information about the extent of the idling automobile and truck phenomenon, just in this town. I wrote a letter to you within the last week with more details. Surely, it is statewide. Surely, it occurs in many states, though there are communities within states aware of the problem and 31 states with anti-idling legislation. The bulk of the problem with climate change is due to the collective actions of millions of people. The people are unaware of how their daily actions of sitting in their cars with the engine on – for minutes and hours – affects the world around them. Not only the quality of air and the heat poured out in the immediate vicinity and exhaust, but directly contributing to rising levels of CO2 and the diminishing ozone.

We live in a connected world, every action affects everyone else. This is an unprecedented emergency. We are either going to fight this or exacerbate the heat. DO SOMETHING.

Experts: If We Don’t Stop Climate Change, CA Fires “Will Seem Mild In Comparison to What’s Coming” https://www.democracynow.org/2018/8/9/experts_if_we_don_t_stop

Establish an agency, reach across to other states to create inter-state agencies to learn about the issue and establish laws. Inform people. The only way that this information will quickly reach the public, is when their purse is affected, through fines. Only then will they become aware of the fact that it is even an issue at all. Think differently. Make this an urgent priority. There are many uneducated people who are unaware, however there are also many educated people who do not make the connection between burning fossil fuels and the contribution to particles per million of CO2 in the atmosphere. The fires raging in California and all over the world, including the Arctic as well as draughts, storms and record-breaking temperatures each month, for the last years, is due to mostly THE ACTIONS OF AMERICANS and their habits. The refugee crisis in Europe, IS BECAUSE OF GLOBAL WARMING along with social unrest.

PLEASE CONNECT THE DOTS AND MAKE IMMEDIATE CHANGES FOR your state, your town, your country, your children, your grandchildren, for trees, birds, all animals and all creatures. 87% extinction of animals in the world is BECAUSE AMERICANS ARE SO ENERGY ABUSIVE. Most citizens are not able to think beyond their immediate tasks, family, activities, and so they continue habits that are basically sliding our sustaining planet into disaster.
Europeans; Germans, Scandinavian countries have public transportation, ride bicycles, even turn off their engines at stop lights. The argument about (more exhaust thrown into the atmosphere by starting an engine) doesn’t cut the fact that sitting with engines on for long periods is putting out exhaust and heat.

i spoke to the mayor and about 100 or 200 other people about idling cars. I do not want to risk my life by approaching people in their cars any more. A man was in a garage working on a car while his truck sat outside, no one inside, belching out fumes and heat. He nodded with a look of annoyance when I asked if this was his truck idling outside. I wrote to your office twice. The second letter was sending figures, and what income the city of Providence could bring in through establishing anti-idling laws. I bicycled from FoxPoint to Downtown, to South Providence, to Smith Hill and College Hill, and encountered one to three idling cars ON EACH BLOCK.

Police sit in their cars with heat pouring out and exhaust. I would make an exception for police, ambulatory emergency vehicles and refrigerated trucks transporting goods that would perish without refrigeration. Anything else is blasphemous, absolutely irresponsible in terms of informing the public THROUGH ANTI IDLING laws and fines, otherwise, THE PUBLIC IS COMPLETELY UNAWARE of how their actions COLLECTIVELY, are influencing and exacerbating climate change.

https://sustainableamerica.org/blog/anti-idling-laws-around-the-nation/

https://www.edf.org/attention-drivers-turn-your-idling-engines

http://ksltv.com/394228/students-test-ozone-levels-cars-idle-schools/?

Regardless of the fact that our current president and the five preceding federal government administrations tried to block environmental rules and mislead and basically misinform the public, doesn’t mean that you can’t step up to the plate and be heroes by championing something that will help all of us. It is up to you now, at a critical time, to take global warming and the fact that Americans are mostly responsible for this and the subsequent climate disruptions globally that have lead to the refugee mass exodus.

Do something immediately! Impose laws and fines. $150 per car, $450 per diesel engined vehicles. Double the fine if they are caught a second time. Create a task force for this issue, police on bicycles, to regulate and enforce it. Now is the time to crack down on air conditioning units. It is preposterous to not see that a massive citywide, statewide campaign needs to be enacted.

Start a department that deals with this, minimizing vehicle traffic: stop cars from driving through Roger Williams Park > I’ve encountered countless people sitting in their cars engine idling, in an area that should be protected, as an environmental refuge. Make people park and walk in the downtown area, it could enhance businesses, rather than be an inconvenience. Cut back on cars. Cut back on industry that is emitting particles and warming the environment.

Research it. You are in a leadership position. Use it.

I couldn’t be more sincere,

Carol sitting under the trees

I was fired from my brand new job today. I don’t get paid for this.

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook & music composition

Have you Heard of Global Warming? | Apparently 60% of Providence Hasn’t | Simple Solutions | Turn off Your Idling Engines

Make America Cool Again

You know that Facebook post in which the kid in the car seat is sobbing about the fact that people are killing animals and causing harm, well I’m feeling that way, except that the emotional devastation is being channelled into anger.

Although I had already heard that various oil companies had known of the dangers of extracting and burning petroleum…it wasn’t until I read this article two days ago
“Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change” By Nathaniel Rich
Photographs and Videos by George Steinmetz
….that laid it all out so clearly, that I feel fully incensed.

As I bicycle by idling cars continually and witness the complete disconnect – lack of awareness among the people, I realize that they are completely unaware.

My feeling of exasperation is not going away.

In fact, after talking to a German woman I overhead speaking German today on the sidewalk, walking with her three kids produced clearly through marriage of mixed race, that of course, Germans do not leave their engines idling, they are aware of how their individual and thus collective actions affect the environment.

It occurred to me today that the reason I came here was to encounter this. Coming from the outside and looking in, after having lived in several European cultures in which walking and gathering in public outside of their cars, is extremely more common. Americans are isolationists. They are spoiled. They feel entitled. They seem to be clueless. The technologies (which I use for contact) are pulling them away from an awareness of their connectedness to their immediate present environment. I see students passing by in the neighborhood housing the Ivy League Brown university walking around with heads buried in their cell phones. Incapable of walking without it being in their hand to perpetually be connected to FB or whatever.

This blog is born however from witnessing the exorbitant number of people I pass by sitting in their cars with their engines idling. I’ve asked individuals, have you heard of global warming? 1% respond with recognition. I don’t think that I’m exaggerating.

United States of Addiction, United States of Avoidance

How many times do people reach for their cell phone to avoid eye contact? Inconclusive at this point, but clearly apparent. What about rates of food, drug and alcohol addiction?

With reference to the media or governments’ lack of response, talk about betrayal. The article is long, yet methodically lays out the facts of recognition and then a series of doing nothing, if anything, exacerbating the problem by denying that it exists, discovered over one hundred and fifty years ago.

It was fully understood and undeniably something to act on through diligent awareness, but put aside for business as usual.

US Government administrationss Misleading Public over 50 years regarding the connection between petroleum extraction and burning and subsequent climate catastrophe

in addition to polluting the immediate environment, idling cars and indiscriminate use of plastics are collectively suffocating the planet

This is the letter that I am still attempting to send within the ‘form within the RI governor’s office website’, which doesn’t allow specific characters – like email addresses – to be incorporated in the body of the automated system.

Climate change is real, enforce laws against idling engines to generate income.

This article should be required reading for someone running a US State government office. I have been riding bicycle every day and night for the last 13 weeks throughout the city of Providence, RI. I have discovered that no matter where I go – regardless of age, gender, race, socio economic class (in fact it seems to be more pronounced among middle class professionals), 60% to 80% or more of the population are habitually sitting in their cars with their engines idling. This is not for a quick pickup, but for sustained periods, leaving their engines running. I encounter, regardless of district or neighborhood, a startling number of cars, per block, per minute, with people sitting in their cars, or on top of their cars, or walking away from their vehicles, with their engine left idling. Perpetually running engines. I feel the heat as I cycle by and smell the fumes.

There appears to be a complete unawareness among the population of the fact

1) That global warming exists at all, and is happening all over the planet, today, every minute.
2) And that people in Providence (collectively), indeed affect the air quality of not only other people and animals (if they still exist) in the immediate vicinity of their vehicle as well as what is happening ecologically on other parts of the globe, where warming has already been apparent for the last decade.

What is going on?

• 31 other US states have anti-idling legislation; either statewide or in a particular municipality or county
• The NYC metropolitan area have $2,000 fines per bus if caught idling.
• Citizens in Germany and Scandinavian countries turn off their engines, ALWAYS, some even during red lights. They are completely cognizant of the ecological emergency and climate crisis, with which the United States is perpetually not dealing with, regardless of the fact that we are the primary perpetrators of this crime to humanity and to all other life forms and systems that also inherited the planet.

What are you going to do about it?

It is unconscionable that this is happening and no one is doing anything (except for the scientists and individuals aware who are perhaps silently suffering in the understanding of continued political deadlocks and misinformation due to participating in an economic system based on perpetual growth and profit that has already killed 87% of the other species and will have large swaths of the US turned into a dustbowl and submerge most coastal cities under water.

This is not an economic issue, this is above economics or the Gross Domestic Product.

This is about whether we want to take steps ourselves, together, to do what our federal government has not been able to achieve, and in fact submerges, suppresses and turns a blind eye.

Human actions are creating an inhospitable planet for most other life forms through blind, headlong consumption and a complete disconnection with the natural world and blind faith in advertising and manipulation.

We are destroying the habitats of most life forms on the planet, and simply turning a blind eye. It is your responsibility as a leader, to take measures to impose legislations that will raise the awareness of idling and censure the actions of your populace.

https://sustainableamerica.org/blog/anti-idling-laws-around-the-nation/

https://www.edf.org/attention-drivers-turn-your-idling-engines

http://ksltv.com/394228/students-test-ozone-levels-cars-idle-schools/?

Officially the population of Providence is 179,300. 60 to 70 percent of the people who are in their vehicles, leave their engine on. Let’s say 60% of the inhabitants regularly sit in their vehicles with their engines idling = that’s about 107,500 people.

A fine to cars for idling of $50 x 107,500 residents = $5,375,000. That’s 5 million. Fines to diesel engines – city, state and independent contractors caught idling could be $200 + per vehicle. Fines for cutting down trees, $1,000, for endangering other creatures’ habitats through negligence or pollutants, ranging from $300 per individual to $10,000’s per business.

If nothing else, imposing fines would be a deterrent, and would immediately alert and inform people of their participation in increasing global temperatures and carbon monoxide levels, contributing to the continued increase CO2 levels and global temperatures rising to levels that in 30 years could prohibit human life. If citizens are not informed of this through education or the media outlets, it is your responsibility as a leader to recognize the crisis, and to enforce education and implementation of penalties as deterrents. Ecocide and homicide continues to take place, by ignoring the issue. Fines to coal and petroleum companies, could be in the $100, millions.

India planted 1.5 Million trees in 12 hours, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/india-plant-66-million-trees-12-hours-environment-campaign-madhya-pradesh-global-warming-climate-a7820416.html by creating the possibility and enforcing it, certainly in a manner that brought people together to do something that will benefit each.

We could have many simple solutions through seemingly small actions, in steps that could make an enormous difference. Such as;

asking people to turn off their air conditioning units (except for hospitals and care facilities) – 3 days of the week – as a starter.
To attempt car pooling, public transportation, bicycling or walking several days of the week
To authorize penalties to the use of plastics
Create jobs for people to educate people about plastics
To inform people about how their participation in using plastics and idling cars are collectively suffocating the planet in addition to polluting the immediate environment

Measures could be taken globally to do this together as the human race, instead of being in competition with one another in terms of a race to increase the GDP.

With the fines, you could use the money to pay a fleet of bicycle cops to enforce the law and establish a safe bicycle infrastructure in various municipalities and between them as well as money to invest in public transportation.

After approaching people individually, talking to the mayor, sending a letter to the mayor’s office, talking to someone in a state legislative office to convey the message about the need to enact legislation to raise peoples awareness, I find it necessary to contact the governor.

Let’s do this together and make America a global leader in dealing with a crisis that we have alone caused, instead of turning a blind eye.

https://digesthis.wordpress.com/2014/09/30/peoples-climate-march-in-nyc-ww-september-21st-2014-flood-wall-street/

Rising Tide of Awareness blogger talking about Great Pacific Garbage Patch at NYC Climate March 2014

Portrait of a guy

Here’s a portrait of a guy I drew in about 15 minutes, after we did an even shorter portrait exchange. It was an evening when I needed to quickly make some money and brought my sketchbook with me. We not only laughed and had fun, drawing one another and then doodling more, but I made the money I needed to as well.

portrait of a guy

subject of portrait

he drew an ink portrait of his cat and dog merging from the middle

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook & music composition.

Carol sitting under the trees

The Flowing Tree | Roger Williams Park | Beauty & Faber Castell Watercolor Pencils

I love trees so much, so they become my subjects of engagement. This is the most recent watercolor pencil painting I’ve done.

The Flowing Tree

Faber Castell Water color Pencils 

July Roger Williams park in Providence, Rhode Island

The Flowing Tree

The Flowing Tree Roger Williams Park art progression

If anyone is interested in purchases or donations, click here.

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook & music composition

Carol sitting under the trees

Japanese Garden | Faber Castell Watercolor Progression | Providence, RI

Japanese Garden Progression – Faber Castell Watercolor Pencils

loving it

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook & music composition

EchoActivate | Education, Communication & Fun | Working Side-by-Side, Empowering through Participating | Cleaning, Reusing, Planting & Restoring Habitats for All Creatures | Global Climate Action Summit

If India was able to plant 66 million trees in twelve hours with a million + people side by side doing it, this same action could happen around the world towards any environmental movement.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/india-plant-66-million-trees-12-hours-environment-campaign-madhya-pradesh-global-warming-climate-a7820416.html

Word cloud of involved actions in EChOACTiVate

I meditate daily and ask the four forces – earth, air, water and plasma – practicing heart rhythm meditation. My intent is to carry my voice to peoples’ platforms I can participate in and for information and guidance to be carried to me. It’s an intuitive process of trusting in the intelligence and consciousness of the universal force. I feel that many things that appear to ‘happen’ serendipitously, arrive because of intention to connect to this information. Magic? Today, for the first time i clicked on and read this info from this community that I learned of while taking courses when living in Pennsylvania. Interfaith Power & Light: A Religious Response to Global Warming. I’d go to multidisciplinary talks with religious leaders from all these different faiths putting forth their viewpoint on various questions. Opening it, i found out about this, http://globalclimateactionsummit.org/. The Global Climate Action Summit happens to be taking place in San Francisco, September 12th to 14th. Just a week before the ccc reunion.

lets mots, les activité
pour EChOACTIvate

It seems to be an excellent place to continue to disseminate my idea. The idea started years ago, imagined actually right before the COP21 Paris climate talks, which I went to, to Paris for two weeks with 20 dollars.

Previously I named the idea Eco Revolution, then EcoActivate, because the first was taken.

https://carolkeiter.wordpress.com/2015/11/21/calling-for-echoactivate-partners-core-team-refugee-manpower-best-weapon-is-education-and-empowerment/

https://digesthis.wordpress.com/2015/11/21/calling-for-echoactivate-partners-core-team-corporate-sponsors-government-subsidies/

lo que tu puedes hacer con EChOACTiVate

The idea is to bring the information to the people, through a cyber portal of information, and a mobile unit that comes to a community with needs that people perceive or perhaps aren’t aware of at all, that they can then do together to clean up and build sustainable energy, transportation and to plant community gardens, bee and butterfly highways, plant trees and build animals bridges…

The idea is to bring people together in a celebratory, participatory way. With the knowledge they need to create, transform and participate in greening their own environment.

Education is the tool. People power is the engine.

was EChOACTiVate ist

Why I Think This World Should End | Prince Ea | Eloquent Storyteller & Poet

Spiritual and social commentary eloquence that I feel is necessary viewing and learning for everyone on this earth.

Prince Ea Brandon Sloan Cinematography Why This World Should End

blogger Carol Keiter

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook & music composition

C o l l e c t i o n o f D r a w i n g s a n d P a i n t i n g s J u l y ‘1 8

Here’s a link of some art I’ve done over the last few years.

Here is a collection of drawings and paintings that I’ve done in the last years

Here are some photos I took in the last days.

lighthouse off of East Providence seen along bike path June 2018

goslings guided between goose parents on river in Providence

blogger Carol Keiter

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook & music composition

C o l l e c t I o n M u s I c C r e a t e d | M u l t I p l e V e r s I o n s

blogger Carol Keiter

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook & music composition

I need some guidance about how to Market my eBook to Educational Material Brokers: private/public/home schools/charter/expeditionary learning..

Hello there,

Any parents, teachers, home-schoolers, educational book publishers, agents, promotors out there who have a clue about who to contact in the arena of educational material brokers? In other words, I need help knowing where to start in the marketing end, to get my book into schools as auxiliary learning digital reading material? When I was a substitute teacher in Santa Fe, New Mexico all the elementary school students had iPads, and the middle and high school kids all had laptops. So that’s the gist of it and the arena I’m aiming for!

I’m writing an educational ebook for kids & young adults; i.e. private/public/charter/home schools/autistic/accelerated/expeditionary learning | 2018-19 year | I need help marketing it to educational material brokers. I am (92%) completed and really excited about it. I haven’t had any council about how to go about doing this: agent, marketing, self-publishing?

It’s designed as a learning tool. My intent is to market it to kids and young adults (home schoolers, autistic/accelerated students, public/private/charter and expeditionary learning schools.

I’ve designed it uniquely as an eBook for digital audiences, I’d never get away with the cost of printing, with almost every page featuring a color image. For the most part the book,

“Adora & Vitali: A Spin on the Matter of Motion”

delves into the world of energy and information, electromagnetism and systems theory. It’s a tale incorporating a great deal of information about physics and the interconnectedness of life. The subjects evolve as the characters unveil them. It is an interplay of art, science and spirituality.

As said, there are images on most of the (circa 180) pages, most in color. Many feature my artwork illustrating characters as well as graphs and images with documented sources, which illustrate the subject matter.

Each ‘chapter’ is a page. The table of contents is a searchable index of subjects. The book can  either be read from the beginning to end, or the reader can skip to different subjects; to focus on that topic or contents for a day, or week. I’ve designed the bibliography in google docs to enable the links to be cross-referenced alphabetically.

I have never done this before. I do not have an agent, nor any tentacles in writing groups or marketing channels. I am doing the research, writing, illustration and editing myself. I intended initially to market it myself, however certainly there are people who specialize in specifically connecting educators with educational material – through educational market brokers.

It will be completed by this summer. Now wait, that’s technically 4 weeks. Yes, I could conceivably pull that off!  Yet, the specific market I’m aiming for is the coming academic school year of 2018/2019. I have no income or sources of revenue presently and am in credit debt. That’s why I’m commuting to the library by bicycle every day: in order to have a desk, electricity, WiFi and an extraordinarily pleasant place to work. (I can’t afford to sit in a cafe and purchase an Americano every day to linger and loiter there….it ads up.

I would appreciate any advice or leads. Naturally, detailed information about the contents of the book are readily available. I’m so excited, hardly anyone has even taken a peak at this. Wow, and it’s been at various bursts, my baby. I’m ready to give this little body of work a life of its own and  share it (at a price) with the world. Hey, I share all the information in the blogs I write, for free, giving the information away. I do foresee wanting to do a lot more writing and music, and do have to pay rent and things like that. Presently, I’ve been camping in a room in the state of Rhode Island. I couldn’t stay in France, no VISA presently. I am so excited to hear the responses and really believe in what I’ve been crafting. As I’ve heard other writer’s say, at some points I feel like the book is writing itself.

I look forward to guidance about what my next step is in bringing this to the appropriate recipients; buyers.

Carol Keiter
carolkeiter@gmail.com
(720) 243-2953

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook & music composition

carol the blogger March 24th, 2017 in New Mexico

Carol Keiter contact

Progressive creation of the captivating tree | Faber Castell Water Color Pencils

captivated with this tree

I completed this first one, captivated with the tree on the lower right hand corner, in two sittings. . I did this today, Cinco de Mayo at Roger Williams park in Providence, Rhode Island, outside of the Botanical Gardens.

Here’s the latest rendition

elegant tree
new rendition
robin that lives there

tree i’m captivated with near the Botanical Garden in Roger Williams park

by the Botanical gardens in Roger Williams park, Providence, RI

Below is my first rendition.

flickr link to my colored pencil watercolor painting of the elegant tree that I fell in love with a week ago

This is today’s, May 14th, a week later – more space in between to breath.

False Dichotomy | Separate from Self | Gabor Maté | Michael Gregor | Shift

Unprecedented this time around with each of the blogs, is my intention to connect the two in meaning. Describing in each case an illness born of separation, and the prescribed means of emerging from this separation with an anecdotal film. Each contain points that will be woven into my book. I’ve created a connection between this and the other blog which I’m sending out to cyberspace – double happiness.

The spiritual and collective social bankruptcy is evident with the continued violence and addictions that stem from a separation from self.

On the frontier of ‘systems theory’, the Hungarian-born Canadian physician Dr. Gabor Maté recognizes that many conditions which people find themselves in are the direct result of their behavior – coping mechanisms – from what they experienced in their infancy.
Maté has masterful insights into the human condition.

Gabor Maté talks of the intelligence of the body When the Body Says No.
— Caring for ourselves while caring for others.

Gabor Maté When the Body Says No intelligence of the body

He states that all physical and mental illness, misaligned behavior, criminality…comes from the trauma a person had in childhood. That ultimately every child entering the world needs to feel the security of attachment, a connection to another human being which extends into a feeling of belonging, together with a sense that they are being and doing ‘who they are’, true to their authentic self.

Maté suggests that most human malfeasance is related to a person’s experience as an infant, due to either not having a sense of security through not having had a significant attachment to another person (parent/caregiver) or having been prevented from expressing who one is. The latter for example, told to keep quiet, that you are in the way, your opinion doesn’t matter, criticized for each move one makes.

He believes that Western medicine continues to reinforce this dichotomy between the body and mind as well as the individual from the social and familial context. This concept of a false separation is what instigated me to correlate the topic with my digesthis blog, in the context of believing that we are separate from our environment.

https://digesthis.wordpress.com/2018/04/26/false-dichotomy-separate-from-environment-zero-point-energy-john-searl-brian-oleary-thrive/ This false sense of separation is what has lead to a mass unconsciousness about who we are and how much we are physically, spiritually and emotionally inextricably a part of our environment.

Maté mentions that this ‘separateness’ point of view interferes with the way that intellects accept information. They stand above what they are describing “behind their intellectual armor”, detached and removed. In their silos of research, they have a difficult time separating themselves from the structure of how they see things from what they’ve studied, to see a larger picture. Caught up in looking through the screen of what they know and have already adhered to as the correct picture, it’s difficult for them to envision a particular disease or symptom as the result of behavior that the child adopted (repeatedly) to compensate for the connection they lacked or being sidelined from being themselves. And that the repetition (like building a muscle or letting it atrophy) embedded in behavior as a coping mechanism, is what leads to substance or food abuse, negligence, suppression of feelings, continual anger or fear, or continued disillusionment and frustration from being obstructed from follow one’s own voice and dreams, is ultimately what makes a person ill. Completely connecting the gut, heart, mind and body…which can best be remedied through connecting all of these in the healing process.

Thich Nhat Hanh
Guarding Knowledge is not a good way to understand. Understanding means to throw away your knowledge.

The emotional centers in the brain are wired for attachment. They are connected to the nervous system electrically. A hormonal immune system, with chemical messengers that travel to other organs; the brain reads what’s happening to the body. The gut has more neurons than the brain, and is sending messages continually to the brain. The gut feelings read the body language of a person. The heart also impacts our brain and physiology.

Many of us have been taught to override our gut feelings with what our intellect, our thoughts and conditioning have told us is more important to believe, when in fact there are plenty more neurons in the gut to bring that wealth of insight.

An infant picks up on signals of body language that translate emotions, with gestures, voice tones that attune them with the message. Even though they have not learned language, they can grasp the truth. He talks of the vast network of neurons connecting the brain, heart, gut, bones and immune system; more neurons are delivering messages from the gut and heart to the brain than the reverse.

Brain develops under the impact of the environment. Wiring the brain is a long-term trait, from a state of the brain to a habitual response. The pharmaceutical industry comes along and brings out pills that treat the symptoms, but do nothing for brain or psychological development. They just increase levels of hormones like dopamine, that has been diminished in the child due to stress. In fact Maté claims that these are not genetic disorders but the result of transgenerational transpersonal familial and cultural patterns are transferred from one generation to the next. One can’t blame a parent when in fact the parent is the result of how his or her parent were as a child. He mentions also Thich Nhat Khan interbeing.

Gabor Maté Attachment, Disease and Addition

In this shorter video on Attachment, Disease, and Addiction he mentions that though the classical Western worldview separates the body from the mind and the individual from the familial and social context, we need a cross disciplinary bio-psycho-social model. He talks of the fact that in traditional medicine, specialists study a type of cancer on a cellular level, yet are dramatically overlooking the obvious, that a cell lives inside a body, within a system relaying chemical, biological, emotional, psychological and social information. One can not separate the cell or the immune system from the stresses that may be occurring physically, socially and emotionally. Trying to understand the biology without understanding the psychological and social relationship is futile. “You can’t study cancer in a cell without seeing the whole relationship. It’s like studying a traffic jam by looking under the hood at the engine of a particular car.”

“When you live in a society that objectifies people, you have to ignore their fundamental emotional and spiritual needs. We live in a society with a pathology of normalcy. The ideological blinders that keep us from looking at the really simple realities of human relationship. Emotional denial serves a broad political and economic perspective, so that the mainstream culture focuses on diversions rather than genuine investigations, which threaten the very foundation of the society.”

One of the points Gabor Maté brings up in this second talk is how one can distance oneself from really seeing a situation, particularly if one is responding on an emotional level that contradicts what knowledge base they have been building.

• Thoughts are eclipsed by emotions.
• The better trained one is at looking at something through the intellectual scaffolding that they’ve built, the less open they are to new perspectives. They can remain shrouded by the intellect. When in fact the heart, gut and immune system of the body are constantly sending out messages.
• Meaning comes through an emotional response. In terms of addictive behavior, once you begin to ask why, you are already opening the door to find answers. That is, once you become aware.

Gregor describes that nutrition is what leads to health.

One of the crucial distinctions we have to begin making, is that what we eat is inseparable from our health or illness. Incredulously, the American Medical Association and other government health offices as well as the majority of medical schools across the country, do not even offer classes in nutrition, nor do doctors talk about the subject to their patients, as Dr. Michael Gregor points out in his talk. Doctors are seduced by pharmaceutical companies to hand out prescription medicine, yet not to talk about diet, when the food that people consume is the leading cause of death due to ‘impoverished’ diets.Dr. Michael Gregor talks of Food as Medicine.

Gregor talking about nutrition, specifically a plant-based diet

The movie “The Shift” put together by Collective Evolution, also talks about meaning conveyed through events that have a strong impact. They talk of 911 as one of the collective onsets of a shift in perspective. The old worldview of people as a commodity and as expendable, and view that the end justifies the means, just isn’t working any more.

The Collective Evolution III: The Shift | Official Release 2014

According to the Collective Evolution’s movie Shift:

“We’re seeing the disintegration of the old worldview and moving into a new one that hasn’t quite constellated yet, it’s been apparent as a growing movement; a political, economic, spiritual awakening, new thought paradigms, that starts with the self realization of looking fearlessly that embraces it.

What can we do?

1) continue learning, continue to research & spread the word to others.
2) vote with your dollars. use your money to show your support of the type of world you support; stop buying needlessly, organic and local foods, instead of industries that maintain this system
3) use the power of numbers; get together with others, join a cause, raise awareness to things that can reshape our world, having larger numbers shows the power that we hold over the elite
4) get together with those in your community to create change; community projects, get to know those around you, break down the illusion of barriers that create separation around us
5) opt out of the system in any way that you can; our system requires our participation and support to keep going; recognize the power that we have
6) start with you; reflect on your worldview and your consciousness; is the world you see today really the world you want to live in? we can think about why it is the way it is

The most suppressed technology is our higher consciousness

Our state of consciousness, or world view, needs to change in order to change the world.”

Donations for Carol Keiter’s writing, eBook, music composition and art, gratefully accepted!

Carol Keiter contact

Compromised by Faltering Hardware & Software – However Just told that I can Have a Room

Since writing this last evening, I’ve been informed that I can have the room available immediately in shared housing here in Providence (a district right next to Providence). It is affordable, which gives me a huge relief, so that I can plunge forward, focusing on finding income while also continuing to work on my own projects. I have wanted to get into vlogging, to add an extra dimension to my blogs. I have been searching for where to live in order to have a lesser overhead, in order to continue to pursue writing my blogs, completing my book and continuing to compose music. In the process of updating my operating system a month or so ago, I lost the functionality of one of the music software that I’ve used to compose, Ableton Live. I now can not open my music. In the meantime, my laptop which I’ve taken very good care of, has started to falter, and is shutting down, I’m writing this as quickly as possible because it has turned on. I have been contacting several artist communities I’ve been informed about since moving to Providence, Rhode Island. I moved here because it appeared to have a lower overhead, more affordable. I’ve been seeking an artist residency for years, and in the last days have begun contacting local artist groups seeking this. Basically many of my tools are faltering presently, as well as a present  lack of housing. I am doing my best to remain positive. Perhaps what I need to do is to have the courage and faith in myself to create a business of my own as an educator, through my blogging (which appear to be visited by groups of students) as well as my music and book (an educational eBook), in order to find a means of acquiring the tools that I need: a new laptop, the Ableton ‘Live’ music software that I have been using – at a discount, so that I can continue. I want nothing more than to complete my book, market it to Charter schools and home schoolers, and to continue to compose music. I have been sinking into debt, higher and higher. I wish to continue to develop my language skills and utilize them; I am conversational in German, French and Spanish. I really need emotional and particularly financial support, ideas, housing. I am writing this and continually sending the text via email to myself, because my computer screen has been going black and shutting down. I see so many things that I wish to contribute to the world, to appeal to the wealthy billionaires to create a means to bring money to many parts of the globe to help communities to create jobs to help themselves, to clean up their plastic waste, to find means of acquiring clean water. I wish to spread messages about sustainability, awareness about consumerism, waste and appeal to people to want to care about the life of other creatures on the planet, to want to protect the habitats of animals. I road bicycle on the outskirts of town an hour ago, 16 miles to visit a Best Buy, and was practically in tears because I feel so alien to all of these megastores, to all of the cars, to the consumerism that drives forward, to the alienation that exists between individuals. And in the meantime, I have several days left till the first of the month of April and as yet, have not secured a place to live. My attitude is everything right now. I am feeling very vulnerable and alienated and alone, and every place where I have sent resumes and cover letters appealing for work, have simply not been answered. I know there is a place for me and a group I can work with and a project I can help to spread, I am presently at a loss and simply do not at the moment know what I am going to do. I am writing this perhaps revealing too much. I simply need a roof over my head and finances to move forward. All I want is a community and housing in which I can set up the milestones of what I can achieve on a day to day and weekly basis, to commit to what I whole heartedly wish to do, and to show that I am capable and competent to continually work hard towards these goals.

There has got to be a place for me somewhere, a community where I belong. There must be a reason I was born and something for me to contribute to this world.

 

Carol Keiter the blogger

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook & music composition

Carol Keiter contact

Racing against time just to post this while my computer is still alive.

The Scary Truth About What’s Hurting Our Kids by Becky Mansfield

I am reposting this article because I believe that it is a very important read.

The Scary Truth About What’s Hurting Our Kids by Becky Mansfield

According to Victoria Prooday, Occupational Therapist & writer at YourOT.com, “There is a silent tragedy developing right now, in our homes, and it concerns our most precious jewels – our children… Researchers have been releasing alarming statistics on a sharp and steady increase in kids’ mental illness, which is now reaching epidemic proportions:

Scary Truth About What is Hurting Our Kids

•  1 in 5 children has mental health problems
•  43% increase in ADHD
• 37% increase in teen depression
• 200% increase in suicide rate in kids 10-14 years old“

She goes on to say that “Today’s children are being deprived of the fundamentals of a healthy childhood:

• Emotionally available parents
• Clearly defined limits and guidance
• Responsibilities
• Balanced nutrition and adequate sleep
• Movement and outdoors
• Creative play, social interaction, opportunities for unstructured times and boredom

Instead, children are being served with:

• Digitally distracted parents
• Indulgent parents who let kids “Rule the world”
• Sense of entitlement rather than responsibility
• Inadequate sleep and unbalanced nutrition
• Sedentary indoor lifestyle
• Endless stimulation, technological babysitters, instant gratification, and absence of dull moments”
• How true… and how sad.

Kids Using Phone Apps to Be Mean to One Another

What You Can Do About It 1

What You Can Do About It 2

What You Can Do About It 3

One reader, Susanne Lorentzen, commented at the end of the article: “The brain reacts when we get physical with our children and dopamine and other neurotransmitters do the same. This can counteract depression in a natural way.

And – we need more hugs, kisses and in general more contact between people of all ages.”

tags: technology overload, limit technology, depression, mental health, teen depression, ADHD, kid suicide rates, nutrition, sleep, outdoor play, movement, entitlement, sedentary lifestyle, technological babysitterss, instant gratification, sadness, emotionally healthy, emotionally available parents, hugs, kisses, contact, dopamine

All Life Has Consciousness | Carl Safina | Are Humans Capable of Letting Other Life Continue?

There is Love on Earth Besides Humans

Carl Safina, PhD in ecology, conservationist and writer

I am very grateful to have discovered Carl Safina’s work and this TED talk just a day previous to posting this. Tears ran down my cheeks as I watched and listened to this scientist’s portrayal of animals, and of humans. Tears continued to stream from my eyes after I listened to his last words. I am so disappointed and basically frustrated with what humans deem as important.

I was about to write a blog about Borders? Why are Human Beings ‘Not Allowed’ to Walk Around on the Earth? However, to me, putting this concept out there of recognizing the importance of all other life forms besides humans, is far more important than the absurd political scenarios that humans impose on one another. What we are doing to the natural world and to other life forms, with our over-population, degradation of the environment, human-induced global warming and inciting a mass extinction, to me, far outweighs any of the absurd things that humans are doing to each other. Carl Safina does not by any means bypass this subject in his talk. He says, what humans do to other empathetic creatures is also what they do to one another.

Animals Carl Safina Empathy Sympathy Compassion

I felt an urgent need to immediately post this to both blogs. I feel very sorry for those humans who do not feel compassion and awe with nature and all of life. I thank my parents that nature and an appreciation for all life forms was revered. I grew up with National Geographic and Smithsonian magazines in the home, and was curated to think way beyond my immediate vicinity.

I recently lauded friends who regularly inform and urge people to think about the protection of animals and wilderness. I mention this in association with a concept that is part of a new mode of thinking, systems thinking, seeing all life forms as interrelated. Human beings should prioritize protecting all other life forms, rather than destroying them and wiping out their habitats without any consideration whatsoever. The various bloody traditions of various cultures that consider it ‘sport’ to kill wolves, whales, bulls is disgraceful. The massive consumption of cows, pigs, chickens and use of land to feed these animals needs to be stopped. Wiping out wild horses and donkeys and other creatures because some believe that by eating particular speciality foods that they somehow will maintain their health or erections, also are dramatically mis-informed. Creatures penned in horrible conditions, blood baths and slaughters because of tradition, must all be reconsidered. People need to be educated. It begins with all of us communicating to one another.

The concept of actually recognizing that we share the same genetics and similar brains and spinal cords with other creatures perhaps will bring about a different sense of empathy.

It is the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh who introduces the concept of inter-being; all life is intricately related.

With a PhD in ecology, conservationist and writer Carl Safina has written several books and papers and has studied various species in their habitat. He was invited by Greenpeace to witness the changing climate in the Arctic and the impacts of industrial fishing on the marine environment.

Human brain exact replica of Chimpanzee brain, merely larger

Dolphin brain larger than human brain, with more convolutions

In his TED talk Safina asks:

“What’s going on inside the brains of animals? Can we know what, or if, they’re thinking and feeling? Carl Safina thinks we can. Using discoveries and anecdotes that span ecology, biology and behavioral science, he weaves together stories of whales, wolves, elephants and albatrosses to argue that just as we think, feel, use tools and express emotions, so too do the other creatures – and minds – that share the Earth with us.”

Animals Carl Safina Albatross nest on most remote islands Full of Plastic

6 month fledgling Albatross Death packed with cigarette lighters

Of the 22 species of albatross recognized by the IUCN, all are listed as at some level of concern; 3 species are Critically Endangered, 5 species are Endangered, 7 species are Near Threatened, and 7 species are Vulnerable.

Welcome Human Life with pics of Animals – Shared Lifes in the World

Since humans tend to adorn the rooms of their new born babies with images of the other creatures with which we share our planet, in which every animal of Noah’s Ark is now in mortal danger, instead of asking the question Do animals love us?, We need to ask, Are human beings capable of letting other life continue?

Carl Safina states, “From all I’ve seen, my main conclusion is that at this point in history, nature and human dignity require each other. Where wild places are destroyed, wild animals lost, and the world degraded and polluted, not only is that itself a great loss for the world, but for people in degraded places it becomes almost impossible to maintain a dignified existence.”

This article in the USA Today describes that global warming continues, with each year breaking record temperatures of the previous.”NOAA’s analysis does not include data from the Arctic, while NASA’s does, NOAA climate scientist Deke Arndt said. The Arctic has been warming faster than any part of the world.”

“This announcement should shock no one,” said Lou Leonard of the World Wildlife Fund. “The key question is what we do about it. With the costs of inaction piling up, Washington, D.C., is largely looking the other way. So it is up to a new class of leaders from American businesses, universities, cities and states to pick up the slack.”

Elephants as in every other species, become who they are

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook & music composition

Power of Addiction & Addiction to Power TEDx Gabor Maté | We Can’t Wait for Those in Power to Make Changes

I’ve taken notes and paraphrased Gabor Maté’s speech. The Power of Addiction and The Addiction to Power: Gabor Maté at TEDxRio+20

Gabor Maté, an erudite doctor, describes in his TEDx talk in Rio the reasons for addiction.

Gabor Maté speaks about the Power of Addiction and Addiction fo Power at a TEDx in Rio de Janeiro

What are the addicts getting from their addictions? Calmness, soothing, a sense of control.

Many of these addictive substances are pain killers, taking away pain.

Why the pain?

He states that Keith Richard’s in his autobiography – a long time heroin addict – mentions the contortions that we go through just to avoid being ourselves for a few hours.

Gabor mentions that the psychiatrist R.D. Laing states:

There are three main things people are afraid of: death, other people and their own minds.

Both brilliant and unconventional, RD Laing pioneered the humane treatment of the mentally ill. But as a father, clinically depressed and alcoholic, Laing bequeathed his 10 children and his two wives a more chequered legacy.

Maté mentions his own previous addiction to shopping. Like any addict, he would lie about it.

His definition of addiction is any behavior that gives you temporary relief and temporary pleasure, yet in the long term causes negative consequences which one can’t give up.

There are many different types of addictions: the addictions to drugs, the addiction to consumerism, sex, the internet, shopping, food.

The Buddhists have the idea of the ‘hungry ghosts’; creatures with large empty bellies and small scrawny necks and tiny little mouths, so they can never get enough. They can never fill this emptiness inside of themselves.

We are all hungry ghosts. And so many of us are trying to fill that emptiness, from the outside.

Gabor Maté is a Hungarian-born Canadian physician

When you are looking at the emptiness of people, you can’t look at the genetics but you have to look at it from the outside.

It is very clear why many addicts are in pain. They’ve been abused all their lives. Hundreds of his patients had been physically or sexually abused, abandoned, emotionally hurt over and over again.

Don’t look for the people in power to change things, in terms of environmental degradation, global warming, the pollution of the oceans, rivers and skies. Don’t look to the people in power to change the immigration and social injustices. The people in power are very often the emptiest people in the world, suffering from their addiction to power. We have to do this ourselves. We have to find that light within ourselves. We have to find that light within communities. We have to begin being an active democracy of the commons; with our own wisdom and creativity. We can’t wait for the people in power to make things better for us because they are never going to. Not unless we make them. They say that human nature is competitive, aggressive and selfish. In fact it’s the opposite. Human nature is cooperative, generous and community minded. TED talks are examples of human nature, people committed to learning and contributing to a better world. If we find that light within, we will be kinder to ourselves, kinder to other people and kinder to nature.

The human brain develops an interaction with the environment. The kind of interaction a child has with the environment can shape the development of the brain. Dopamine is the incentive, motivation chemical. Dopamine flows whenever we are motivated, excited, curious, vital, vibrant. Without the dopamine, we have no motivation.

The addict gets a hit of dopamine in the brain. Drugs are not by themselves addictive? Drugs are not by themselves addictive. Some people become addictive to drugs, but many do not. Food is not addictive, but to some people it is. Shopping is not in itself addictive, but to some people it is. Television is not addictive, but to some people it is.

Why the susceptibility? Genetically the receptors, chemical binding sites in the brain for endorphins, morphine like substances, that make possible the feeling of love and attachment to the parent.

Heroine and morphine act on the endorphin system. For abused children, those circuits don’t develop. When you don’t have love and connection in your life when you are very young, you don’t develop those receptors.

As a baby of Jewish parents in an Eastern European country as Hitler was gaining power – the speaker Gabor Maté was picking up on the stresses and terrors of his mother, which were shaping the child’s brain. Children get the message that ‘my mother must not want me’ if she is not happy around the child.

So he becomes a workaholic because if his mother doesn’t want me, then he wants to be needed. Yet because he’s responding in this way by working so much and not being available for his own children, his children receive the same message, that the parent must not want him.

In this way humans pass on the trauma and unconscious patterns from one generation to the next.

Each person feels the emptiness in a different way, stemming back to when they are very small.

We may all point the finger to the ‘addicts’, yet look at what we’re doing to the earth? We are injecting all of these terrible things into the earth, the environment, the air, water.

A man was killed in Brazil for protecting the rain forest. As in Brazil, many of the indigenous people in Canada are the ones who are heavily addicted after suffering the trauma of losing their land, being side-lined and disregarded.

The people on the opposite side of this, who are crushing the Native American territories and destroying pristine nature, are those addicted to wealth and power.

Many of the historical figures who were extremely addicted to power, Stalin, Napoleon, were people of physically small stature. They were outsiders, coming from a population outside of the mainstream. Their sense of insecurity and inferiority came from emptiness they were trying to fill from the outside.

In each of the stories of Buddha and Jesus, both were tempted by the devil for power. Each said no, because they had the power within themselves. They wanted to teach people through soft words, wisdom and their actions.

Jesus: “The power is within. The kingdom of god is within.”

Buddha: “Don’t mourn me and don’t worship me. Find the lamp inside yourself. Find the light within.”

I’m bringing up his point twice, because it is so vital. “Don’t look for the people in power to change things, in terms of environmental degradation, global warming, the pollution of the oceans, rivers and skies. Don’t look to the people in power to change the immigration and social injustices. The people in power are very often the emptiest people in the world, suffering from their addiction to power. We have to do this ourselves. We have to find that light within ourselves. We have to find that light within communities. We have to begin being an active democracy of the commons; with our own wisdom and creativity. We can’t wait for the people in power to make things better for us because they are never going to. Not unless we make them. They say that human nature is competitive, aggressive and selfish. In fact it’s the opposite. Human nature is cooperative, generous and community minded. TED talks are examples of human nature, people committed to learning and contributing to a better world. If we find that light within, we will be kinder to ourselves, kinder to other people and kinder to nature.”

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook & music composition

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook & music composition

Carol Keiter le_blogger, writer & illustrator, musician & composer

eVISA rejection of US citizen at Delhi-deported upon arrival

This post was removed from Trip Advisor.

Had filled everything out properly, with the exception of the pdf file pic of my passport being too fuzzy. After correcting the problem by going back to re-scan it with the proper proportions, my 3rd attempt to upload the correct size was met with an auto-response “already uploaded”. Would not let me upload again. Contacted the email link to the Indian gov to explain the complication, sending all documentation and the attached ‘correct’ pdf file size. Was rejected. Sensed that this was a small technical functionality error of the online form and assumed that I would be able to resolve it upon arrival. I was wrong.

Either over a bad mood or a sense of duty, this 2nd person called to my attention was discontent with my error in judgement. When yet a higher boss arrived, the rigid man explained the situation in an accusatory tone, inciting his boss with his tone of condemnation. The boss gave me 15 min. to decide where to go and book the flight. No WiFi, only a laptop, he sent a guy with his phone to relay the wifi. Having taken time to deliberate what should be my next move, I hadn’t yet booked a flight to Nepal, which according to them accepts ‘visa upon arrival’; figured it was the closest place where I intended to go anyway. When I hadn’t yet booked this flight within the 15 minutes (literally), I was told I was being sent back to my departure point, Frankfurt, Germany. The particular person who was assigned to accompany me to the gate, holding my passport, was a young friendly guy, who asked if I was on FB and I’d given him my card to check out my blogs. In other words, it can be a matter of who is working that day or night, and this was a late arrival, maybe these guys were getting tired and cranky, annoyed that they work on the night shift and perhaps get points for doing their duty to the T. Was treated kindly by the crew of Kuwait Airways, and basically upon being deported, was told I wouldn’t have to pay for the flight. The 2nd leg of the flight- a 777- the jet was a quarter empty. I was pretty surprised that this occurred but wasn’t putting up any argument. I assumed that a single, white, kind female from the States with no record, would have no problem negotiating. Wow, not so.

There wasn’t a great deal of diplomacy among the Indian staff, felt like I was being scolded. So much for attempting a bold adventure as a budget traveler who already had lined up my first stopping point and investigated train travel, street smart travel information about what to avoid, had investigated what electronics I would need; adapter, that the French power surge protector would work with 240 V. and that I would get a voltage regulator in addition. Excited for my first exploration of Asia, east of Eastern Europe. Had lined up my first workaway host and worked out the transport from the Delhi airport to the necessary train connections, timetables to Rajasthan. Had even found a pretty cool map that alerts one to pollution levels real-time, internationally. Intention was to be in nature, learn their culture, intent to volunteer at an elephant sanctuary or elephant village. Love nature and life, don’t love the way humans alienate one another. I’ll be commenting about my immigration problems in Frankfurt Germany shortly, which felt an awful lot like extortion-using intimidation, power and the perfect circumstances to leverage authority and extract large sums of money. 🙂

US citizen departing Frankfurt airport, forced by immigration to pay €1,000 cash, for a fine that accrued interest over 5 years, for not paying a €2.50 U-Bahn public transport ticket

I originally posted this last night on Trip Advisor, however it was deemed not appropriate, and removed.

US citizen departing Frankfurt airport forced by immigration to pay €1,000 cash, for a fine that accrued interest over 5 years, for not paying a €2.50 U-Bahn public transport ticket

Arriving at the Frankfurt airport in time to investigate duty free electronic stores for an electrical adapter and voltage swing protector, I was halted by a 25 year old officer who, observing his computer screen unsmilingly, asked in German something a train in Berlin. I lived there years earlier, and I figured that he was alluding to a time I was caught on the U-Bahn without a ticket, 3, 5 or 7 years ago. Having left the country abruptly right before Christmas 2012, I wasn’t aware that this was accruing interest. I guess in our electronic world in which these records endure, they weren’t able to contact me by email to inform me, that would have been to, uh, sophisticated.

I explained in my best German that I hadn’t been living in the country, and in fact can prove with residence and employment records where I’ve been living the last few years. This information was disregarded. He would not listen to any explanation. I was treated with hostility, almost aggression. I guess that being a frugal artist/writer and enjoying pouring time into creativity is not permissible, in a world that is looking one-dimensionally in terms of the GDP instead of quality. The officer walked into a room among 6 or so other colleagues and to my astonishment, through the glass wall I saw him laughing and smirking. Towards me he was cold and threatening, using intimidation. He told me I either must hand him €1,000 in cash from the ATM, conveniently located several yards away, or go to jail for 15 days. So the fine for riding without a €2.50 train ticket, rose with interest through the years to an easy, rounded number of €1,000. Since then I discovered that with the exchange rate to USD and $66 transaction fee at that ATM and additional $39 foreign transaction fee at this same ATM, added up to costing 1,431.19 USD. As I watched them laughing with one another,  I took a photograph. Another young officer dashed out of the office at first demanding my phone, and receded when I deleted it before him. Considering the fact that the other option was jail (which I would have done as the frugal artist that I am), it isn’t really an option. It’s like complete coercion. The traveler has no choice. When one has planned, prepared and paid for an anticipated travel, it’s sort of the perfect situation to extract this money with ease. Extortion was the word that came to mind; using intimidation and authority in circumstances that almost 99.99% of the time passengers would prefer to hand over the requested exorbitant amount of cash. Little alternative, in addition to paying for an eTicket and Indian eVISA. I was ultimately deported, for a pdf file of my passport being fuzzy, due to the fact that it was initially scanned improperly at the copy shop, and I hadn’t stated the 1st time what dimensions it needed to be, another language barrier and naiveté on my part. I was making this trip to ultimately follow my passion, complete a book I’m writing and to continue to write blogs, compose music…Poverty is punished in the modern world of globalization and finance. So the budget traveler with 2 small backpacks, sleeping bag and intention to volunteer with elephants and do work/living exchanges with people through workaway, now is $2,000 dollars in debt. And absolutely delighted with the experience I had with charming and bright people who enriched my world through our conversations and realizing that resilience and value of experience over material acquisition, is of great value. Appreciation of all of the nuances that life offers and value of the natural wonders of the world, made for a delightful trip of 7 days of travel for a 1.5 hour visit to India. 🙂 Delhi was intoxicatingly polluted, with 12 foot visibility. So nice that our world opts for measuring worth with the GDP, as we ruin the planet, are filled with fear and fueled with a desire to extract and consume, rather than to protect and strive for a harmonious relationship with the earth and all life. Just sayin’.

The Eloquently and Elegantly stated Truth

Nothing is more important than reading this. And then reading it again.

The most elegant and eloquent presentation of the facts, that anyone who can understand words, must be persuaded to hear and respond to emotionally and intuitively as the truth.

I have merely copied and pasted the text of this writing within the link below (minus the original links within it), feeling it to be the utterly most important statement of vast insight, that everyone must read. And continue to talk.

-.—.—-.—–.——.-.—.—-.—–.——.-.—.—-.—–.——.-.—.—-.—–.—-.-.—.–.-

http://www.grenzbegriff.com/2017/10/leaving.html

 

these are my words at the time of writing — I am more like tree than rock — as I bend to reach the sunlight

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Leaving

Hi friends,

I’m leaving Google at the end of next week.

There’s too much I want to say.  🙂

I spent the summer away from work, outdoors in Oregon, awash in beauty.  I learned a lot.  I wept at how we’re treating the earth, as I rode past mile after mile of logged forests, polluted streams, and lifeless monocrop fields.

I got to be part of what I’ll call “alternative culture”, to explore ways of meeting all of our human needs through local community alternatives to basically everything we currently use money for.  I wrote some about this time here on this blog.  I barely scratched the surface though.  More and more people, perhaps millions now even in the West, are devoting their lives to new (and sometimes ancient) ways of living in healthy relationship with each other and with the earth.  While they are usually partly within the current system, when all of these new ways of living come together, the current system becomes obsolete.  I see joyous glimpses of this everywhere.

Meanwhile our dominant civilization is killing its own foundation: the healthy web of life on earth.  Through deforestation and pollution we are destroying the ability of the planet to support all forms of life.  We can see this in the oceans where the fish populations are collapsing, the silent fields that were once thriving forests, and the deserts where millions of people go hungry in drought.  This ecological crisis can’t be solved simply by swapping oil for solar panels.  I’m no longer optimistic that we will soon fix these problems with some new technology.  It’s quite possible that climate change is exacerbating the storms and droughts and fires, and that these will continue to become more severe in the next years.

The effects are not evenly distributed.  The unhoused breathe wildfire smoke while many of the housed have filtered air.  Some of us see our homes flooded or burnt while for others business continues as usual.  Most communities in the country and increasingly in the world have lost the ability to sustain themselves from their land, and now must import almost everything they need from elsewhere, which becomes precarious when those importing the goods see no profit in it (food deserts), or when disaster breaks down the supply line like in Puerto Rico.  Many communities no longer have access to clean water, or are losing it as I write.  On Monday I listened to a man from Guatemala talk about a new silver mine near his home that is polluting and drying up the water supply for many villages there.  Almost all silver is used to produce electronics, and demand is rising.  In Oregon this summer, ancient trees thousands of years old were cleared for fire breaks.  The entire planet is being saturated with chemicals that we ought never to have created.  These kinds of damage cannot be undone or fixed by technology.  The story for other species is even worse, as most wild animal populations have died off and we pack billions of animals in cages in horrific factory farms.  The coral reefs, the rhinos, the ancient forests, the whales, and even the insects… who speaks for them?  Some people do, and they end up in jail if their actions threaten profits.  Profits are made at the expense of Life.

And within our civilization, we have more prisoners and refugees, more drugs and anxiety and depression and stress and addiction than ever.  Even in wealthy regions, most people don’t like the work they do all day.  It’s also not physically healthy to be indoors or using a computer or riding in vehicles for as many hours as many of us who are “successful” do.  What is happening to us?

It seems the leaders of our world are apathetic or powerless, as they fight over the most gaudy deck chairs on this titanic.  While it pains me, I don’t hate them for this; their actions are the product of a traumatic history that touches all of us.  They don’t know what they’re doing.

I envision a more beautiful world where humans have a healthy part to play, to love and respect the earth, not to dominate and exploit it.  I see many people living that vision already, and want to live my life in service to it.  I see the extremes of both ugliness and beauty grow more stark.  Ugliness as we close down and protect ourselves from the ‘other’, beauty as we come together in community, in love with mother earth.  Will “society” as a whole make some kind of transition, or continue the march into dystopia and eventual chaos?  I don’t know.  It will be both at the same time.  Some people are already in an obvious dystopia, some are in a beautiful place yet in the shadow of a collapsing ecosystem.  To hope for a peaceful transition would be to ignore the incredible violence on which the current system lives.  It will be violent because it already is.  May we learn to be kind to each other as these changes unfold.

It’s been said that we need the darkness to see the stars.  We can open ourselves to what is happening, feel and honor our pain, grieve what is lost, and revel in our deep gratitude for the beauty of life.  I don’t mean to be a downer pointing at all this ugliness.  I feel that we have a deep need to see it and acknowledge it.  It makes the beauty that much more precious and worth living for.

“Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?”
-Mary Oliver

What should we do then?

I don’t know exactly what we should do.  I don’t have a rational “here’s what everyone needs to do” that will resolve all of these crises.  I want to let go of my need to control what happens, because I’m really not in control.  At the same time, even if I let go and accept whatever comes, I am a human being and it is natural for me to care and want to help, to serve what I love.  I will not deny that part of me either.  So I find myself thinking about how to help, even if it seems “hopeless” overall.  I need not stress about the outcomes, but I will still act.  What else would I do with my few short years here?

So what might I do to be practical?

I don’t believe our technology is serving us well.  We, the wealthy humans near the top of the power hierarchy may see it as indispensable, but if we consider the animals or the fish or the trees or the laborers in the sweatshops and mines and plantations, it’s not working out so well.  Yes, our technology relieves some suffering in some places, but at what cost?  We simply do not, and probably cannot, count the costs of development.  I am not enthusiastic that further technological progress will heal us.

I also don’t believe that our problems are mostly due to money being in the wrong hands.  Measuring everything by monetary value seems to me one of the roots of the crises.  The mentality that values money over life drives much of the pollution and resource extraction and oppression around the world, since humans first accumulated “property” and enslaved each other.  I don’t feel that getting as much money as I can and giving it to the non-profit side of the system is the best way for me to serve what I love.  I feel that the money abstraction and the distance it puts between us and the effects of our actions makes us feel disconnected and alone.

I also don’t like our culture’s valuing of measurable impact over everything else.  Much of what is precious to me cannot be measured.  What’s the measurable value of a 5000 year old yew tree?  What’s the measurable value of caring for a disabled child?

“May what I do flow from me like a river
no forcing
and no holding back
the way it is with children.”
-Rilke

So I don’t know what we all should do exactly, and I don’t know what I will do beyond the short term.  I’m skeptical of money and the dominant culture’s value system.  I want to trust what makes me feel alive over our culture’s normal stories that usually are rooted in fear.  I recognize that I’m one of the most privileged people in the world.  I know most people do not have the options that I have.  I don’t mean to judge, only to encourage.

Right now what’s happening is I’ve been living in a homeless protest encampment in Berkeley the last couple months, which has given me still another perspective on our society.  It got interesting this weekend and we’re fighting eviction, hoping to benefit and inspire homeless communities around the country.  With all of the disaster and war refugees today, and housing crises in many places, there are more and more people who can’t have regular housing, and we could learn to live together with more kindness and understanding.  I’m also involved with the community here in other ways like Food Not Bombs.  I expect soon I’ll be moving on to other places, to learn and to live in service to what I love.  To restore soil and help plants grow and be community.

I’ve learned I don’t need much money to live well myself, so I don’t need to earn it for myself.  Perhaps my perspective on money and impact will change and I’ll eventually decide that earning money and supporting my many friends who don’t have much money in their various causes is the best way to contribute, and then I might return to a job, but we’ll see.  “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

Wherever I am, I’ll be with some kind of community learning how to live in healthier relationship with each other and with the earth.  There’ll be dark moments and joyous moments, and this is life.  Life is good.  Whatever comes, I will give attention to the beauty around me, the beauty of community and of nature and of every form.  Beauty everywhere begs our attention.

“An eye is meant to see things.
The soul is here for its own joy.

A head has one use: For loving a true love.
Feet: To chase after.

Rumi quote Spirit Mind

carol the blogger on her return hitch from Taos, New Mexico to Santa Fe. One side of my sign said Santa Fe, the other, Fanta Se

Pierre the Pumpkin | Halloween 2017 in Montpellier, France | Day of the Dead

Montpellier, and France in general, doesn’t celebrate Halloween, but I do.

I spoke to soon.

Pleasant surprise, last night on Halloween, October 31st, Montpellier’s historic section was full (as usual), yet with a significant number of people in costumes on the mostly pedestrian narrow streets.

And unlike one random secular holiday, France celebrates the ‘Day of the Dead’ which is for them November 1st, for a full week. A week off from school! What?

grinder, Marlboro tobacco, lighter and OCB papers

As people do often in Montpellier, and in a lot of French towns, they walk around, hence the word promenade – both describing a verb to walk, and a noun, a central commons. Last night after pulling a costume together, I headed into town. Since I had covered a lot of distance bicycling during the day, I raced to catch the tram passing me as I was heading into town, to get on it with my bike. I was surprised and happy to see a group of three girls in costume getting on the train at the same time as I. They proceeded to take one after another selfie. There was another guy sitting alone with a black lace veil and scary looking eyes, when I could see them. He would reveal fangs every once in a while. His head remained straight ahead, perhaps slightly bent down. Duh, he was probably looking at his cell phone. The phone was the only thing out of place as he walked from the train in his black clad macabre nun costume. The train arrived at the central plaza in town by the historical center, la Comedie. Once I maneuvered my bike off at this stop I saw all sorts of costumes.

It was clear that this is one of those rare French towns that clearly does celebrate Halloween. It helps when 25% of the population are students. Sure, it was a small percentage, but this meant an ever flowing bunch of costumes. As I’ve mentioned, people in the town of Montpellier love to stroll, promenade, and certainly tourists as well. They gather in cafes and bars that spill into the streets.

I saw some really pretty scary, realistic looking wounds. wow! Yet only took a few pictures of costumes. There were a bunch of excellent, graphically real looking facial wounds and some very clever home-made costumes. One woman was a walking laundry basket. The group shot I took was because I walked up to a guy with a large metallic looking thing, asking “what is that?”. “I’m a grinder; explaining that they were the joint roller brigade; consisting of the grinder, OCB rolling paper, a pack of Marlboro and a lighter.

Pierre the Pumpkin Halloween in Montpellier, France 2017, where Halloween isn’t celebrated

Today, November 1st isn’t a holiday for me, but it is for France. I was wondering why the copy shop I went to was closed, looking at the sign and knowing it wasn’t that late, perplexed. As I paused on a tree-lined street with my bicycle closer to the center of town, I randomly asked a strolling couple with their two toddlers, “is today a holiday or something?” gesturing at the barricaded shops. They answered, we don’t speak french, we speak English. “It’s the Day of the Dead.” I mean, I knew the kids have a week off from school, but I wasn’t really sure what specific day this holiday landed on. I said, it would be crazy to think of people getting a week off from school for Halloween. I laughed. He’s a diplomat, originally from Flemish Belgium and she’s Turkish. They lingered. We talked for a while. I said I hadn’t remembered Day of the Dead being celebrated in Germany, mentioning I lived in Berlin, knowing they have a large Turkish population. She quickly retorted that Berlin has the largest Turkish population outside of Istanbul. He said “sure, it wouldn’t be celebrated in Germany, they’re Protestant”. Its roots are in the Catholic origins of celebrating ancestors. Their kids speak Flemish (Dutch), Turkish, English and are learning French. The woman’s Turkish name means ‘tree with no roots’. I said, but all trees have roots, and she said exactly. I said, oh, it’s a metaphor. She added that she has always embraced rootlessness, which is why when they met and he was still studying, he decided to become a diplomat so that they could live a lifestyle of travel. They’d lived in Belgrade, Serbia.

The plaza was full of street performers and crowds around them. In this case several groups of break dancing guys with their loud sound system. Each capitalizing on the November 1st holiday, Day of the Dead. I searched the internet and saw November 2nd as the official Day of the Dead, hey, that’s my mother’s birthday; November 2nd. As I continued searching, it turns out that Day of the Dead actually starts on the 31st of October and goes through November 2nd, depending on what culture you participate in and how it’s celebrated. It’s officially on November 1st in France, called La Toussaint, All Saints Day. I found this CBS link showing photographs of this celebration throughout the world, in one form or another. It for the most part is about honoring ancestors. In fact, I hadn’t realized it was such a prominent holiday in Europe. I knew it was a thing in Mexico, but I never knew to what extent. Here’s a good article about its Mexican roots.

paper cut out graffiti

carol in her halloween costume 2017 to promenade along the montpellier streets

decided to grab a pumpkin from the grocery store today

roasted pumpkin seeds

I sure am fond of Pierre

His shape made me spontaneously draw him out.

hIs hat is very shiftable!

Pierre with an Asian cut

This was the spontaneous costume this past saturday

back in March in Santa Fe

Fleuve Lez – Lez River, Montpellier Oct. ’17 Watercolor pastel pencils

I went out with paper a week ago at sunset when I did the first edition sketch of this, then went back today, racing to finish as darkness encroached along the water at Antigone in Montpellier on a warm October day.

Fleuve Lez – Lez River, Montpellier Oct. ’17 Watercolor pastel pencils

This Is Not A Love Song | Phone Addiction | lyrics by me

this_is_not_a_love_song shot of the original text

I mentioned that I was going to share these lyrics for “This is Not a Love Song”, once i wrote them. Fortunately i took a picture of what I wrote, because I lost the original piece of paper in a park a day or two later. Just finished typing it and I’ll read it at this poetry slam this evening at Librairie Scrupule

Poésie Slam Scène Ouverte

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s about peoples’ device addiction, in this case, their phones.

 

This is not a love song

… lyrics may evolve from this version!>

no matter where I am
I can’t take my eyes off of you
at home, on my way, no matter what i do
anything, anyone could be near
i wouldn’t notice, have no fear

I’m addicted to you, toujours
Is it love? I’m not quite sure
I use you often, there’s no question
to capture images of myself without hesitation

it doesn’t really matter what else is there
as long as i’m captured, and I can share

this is not a love song
i can’t stand it when you aren’t there
i show you off like you’re my prize
to bring your attention to any eyes

I quickly whip you out wherever i go
just to show you off, you’re very desirable you know
if i could, i’d take a selfie with you
but alas, I can’t ever be in it with you

forever my eyes on you will be
regardless of what is in front of me
you dictate my moves, you alert me too
serendipity & synchronicity are out the window

it doesn’t really matter what else is there
as long as i’m captured, and I can share

i’m sure to display you for all eyes
when you’re not in my hand, i feel deprived
i can’t bare it when you’re not there
like a burning flame, you draw me in to stare
it’s as if no one else exists for me
i even take you with me when i pee

i can’t take my eyes off of you
i’ve waited long enough to have you
nothing and no one will get in the way
my addiction to you is here to stay

when I’m not looking, i am listening
you’re like a magnet in my hand, glistening
tuned-in-to you, wired away
certainly no one else will get in the way

it doesn’t really matter what else is there
as long as i’m captured, and I can share

no spectacle could possibly distract me
yet this obsession is not without a fee
could I live without you? i may be wrong
but without a doubt, this is not a love song

The music will come.

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook & music composition

carol_taking_photo_lancaster_pa

carol keiter contact card

Light Water Wave Montpellier, France

This is a link to pictures on flickr that I took on my most recent bicycle ride to the Mediterranean sea from Montpellier. There’s a bike path all the way.

Light Water Wave Montpellier, France

blogger in Nice

Montpellier Jardin des Plantes France

Arsene Montpellier

My intention was to attend a graffiti event in Arceaux, then head to the Jardin des Plantes on this rather humid, warm and temperate day in October. I walked around covering a lot more of the gardens this time. I noticed in addition to the collection of cats who enjoy the gentle admiring attention of the clientele, the incredible richness of the audio. A magnificent collection of birds, fabulous layers of different tones, pitches and rhythms.

Montpellier Jardin des Plantes

As I was making the tour of the entire grounds, i came back to the place where I usually stop and go no further. It was here where my eyes met with an elderly man whom I greeted with a smile and bonjour. And he was delighted to stop and interact. We wound up talking for quite a bit, and then as we were saying good bye a second time after a delightful conversation, I looked at the title of the slim paperback book he had in his hand. I declared, oh Spinoza, philosophy! And right before that I informed him of the different things that I love to do, photos, recording sounds there, writing. I added that my computer was in my backpack, and that I arrived on velo, bicycle, so that I had my office with me. He commented, mobile office. I mentioned that here there’s so much stimulation to the senses; light, rich textures of sounds, feel and to the intellect as well, because the design of nature is so elaborate. I added that this in itself is the concept of GOD, not something manufactured by human beings. And he said, that is exactly what Spinoza says. And he said three words, Theo era natura, let me look this up quickly.

Spinoza’s metaphysics of God is neatly summed up in a phrase that occurs in the Latin (but not the original Dutch) edition of the Ethics: “God, or Nature”, Deus, sive Natura: “That eternal and infinite being we call God, or Nature, acts from the same necessity from which he exists”

emulating nature

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook & music composition

blogger in Nice

carol after a swim and bike to sea

Hitchabout Nice – Antibes – Aix-en-Provence – Arles | back to Montpellier

I think it was the fastest I’ve ever gotten rides in my entire hitchhiking experience. Residing in Montpellier, France, I had decided to hitch to Nice, the day before. I had anticipated it, knowing that my sister and her British husband go there regularly to escape the York, England chill. It was these two who had visited Montpellier several years earlier on a regular basis. That put this town on the map for me. I liked the sound of it. When I’d googled the town back when I suddenly had the proposition to go to the East coast from Taos, New Mexico, I learned that it’s the fastest growing city in France, of which 25% are students that emerge during the academic year. I sort of made the decision to go there in particular, and base myself . I was actually still deliberating on whether Portugal might be a less expensive and lively place to live while I was purchasing the bus ticket from Paris for Montpellier. At some point I decided I wanted to be closer to other countries in Europe and also where I have a semblance of knowledge of the language.

Mont Saint-Victoire notoriously painted by Paul Cézanne among others

Nice, didn’t appear to have any available couches to surf on. The weather which has been continually warm and sunny, dropped about 10 degrees with predicted rain. I decided to go anyway. My bicycle had just been stolen 4 days earlier in the middle of the day around the corner from the cafe I was working in. After the initial discovery, I decided it was a gift for whoever took it. They not only got bad karma, but also a bike that didn’t work. It was hurting my knees because the gears basically didn’t move and I had to get off frequently, to walk up hills. Montpellier is full of them. Many at gradients of 55ª angles.

When I’d arrived in Montpellier the first day I asked a woman sitting on the tram near me “where is the mont”? She discussed it with her friend and decided that she didn’t know. My guess is that the whole town is so hilly that they decided to call it Montpellier, which means mountain. So, the missing bike precluded transport into town outside of the tram TAM, so it was as good a time as any to check out some other places along the Mediterranean. Nice, France is really close to Italy and Switzerland. By the time I finally left the house after consulting google maps to know what destinations to write on a sign, it was going on 2pm. The drive is a little over 3 and a half hours.

I strolled to the end of these outdoor tables with people seated there where I spotted a large white clean piece of cardboard tossed on the ground beyond the tables. I was already steering myself towards this cafe to ask for cardboard. Nice start, I had markers. The entrance to the highway was basically right there. This area was a short walk from where I’d currently been living, conveniently on the edge of town. I noticed several cheap bus lines departing from there, Sabine. I incidentally had been told two days previously that I needed to move out by the end of the month, a day after the bike theft. I had two weeks to decide my next moves. That was another reason to make this trip, a few pairs of ears to discuss my options. I was now less convinced that I wanted to stay in Montpellier. The housing situations had been a challenge.

I watched traffic stopping and starting at a traffic light, and was standing right before an indentation in the road for busses, perfect for cars to pull over. I had written Nice on one side of the sign and was starting to write Aix-en Provence on the other, flipping it up for cars to read both sides, when the first small truck pulled over after only a few lights. I hadn’t been there more than 10 minutes. He’d been working in Montpellier for the day and was on his way to Aix. He’s an Albanian man from Kosovo, his name packed with consonants, Xhemil Iveseldaj.  He’s been living in Aix-en Provence among other members of his family, for 40 years. He was returning from his work week in Montpellier where he stays in a hotel. His boss pays for that, along with his tolls and I guess all travel expenses. He works in such a specialized field, that he’s been accustomed to these long commutes for years, sometimes sweeping countrywide. He’d previously commuted to Paris from Aix, and before that by plane to another town. I learned a fair amount about his life and his two sons. He is one of 7 siblings, five brothers and two sisters. He said in Albania the families tend to be even larger. He said he doesn’t believe in a ‘God’ but in nature. We agreed about that, ‘Nature’ is our ‘god’. I asked if he believes in climate change. We discussed it for quite a while along with other topics.

He had missed his turnoff and I was wondering if I was going to be dropped off in the middle of the highway at an inconvenient place, but he then went back through toll booths, and tracked back to the highway where we were now still heading towards Aix-en-Provence en route to Nice. He’d seen the Aix on my sign. Works every time to have a sign. Xhemil always seemed a bit impatient when coming to any toll, as if seconds shaved off his time were going to critically screw up his day. I guess he was simply in a big hurry to get back home at the end of his workweek. He brought me to a good place where all traffic was heading in the direction of Nice.

I was happy to find a bathroom next to an odd parking garage area where on one side there were buses, ironically, one on its way to Nice. I had covered half the distance already and didn’t bother to approach the bus to ask the driver, preferring to hitch. Someone saw my signs and was yelling out to me from the top story of this large round parking garage building. I ignored him/them. It took about 6 minutes, maybe less, for a car to stop. I heard the responses from above as I was getting into the vehicle. The driver was Olivier, a local who lived in a little town with a great view of this mountain outcropping Saint Vincent from one side. He was on his way to Cannes for the evening. Olivier is an engineer, specifically works on plane engines. He lived in Paris for a stint, said he learned a lot working for Air Bus. He still works for them, and was relieved to move back to his home ground.

Olivier says this landmark outcropping of rock Mont Sainte-Victoire, changes color frequently and has been a feature of many painters.

He and I had a nice rapport. We talked the entire time and really had a lot of similar points of view about the quality of simple things in life that give it value. He dropped me off at a very convenient location at the entrance to highways from Cannes. I was sorry to see him go.

My next ride was with a professional chauffeur, John Christopher. He had made sort of a precarious stop to pick me up. I guess as a local he knows what he can get away with. He was going to pick up his clients on this late afternoon to take them to a fundraiser gala event, hosted for wealthy families who were donating money to hurricane victims in Saint Martin, a French island in the Caribbean. He has worked for this same family exclusively for 15 years. He said that this event was perhaps at a hidden location. He knew that football stars, actors and actresses were going to be there among the very wealthy patrons. He described what these evenings could be like, and how he had to always be available for and and all things that might occur. He might have to make the commute over the bridge to pick up one item left behind, or drop off kids at different places. I enjoyed this little scope into the lives of the upper crust there, from the chauffeur’s point of view. A very gentle guy, he left me off before taking his route to the home of his employer. We left with smiles lingering.

A bridge separated me between where I stood where everyone seemed to be racing to their next destination. I’m guessing I was at St.-Laurent du Var by this bridge. I wondered how long this ride would take, since now I was extraordinarily ‘out of place’. A hitchhiker with a backpack among demonstratively expensive cars and high income drivers. Surprisingly, a car stopped. It was Raphael a medical student in Nice, where he also was raised. He looked distinctively Spanish or Italian. He did me the courtesy of using his phone to dial my contact number and drop me off after crossing into Nice to a very familiar cement way lined with Palm trees before the beach. The Promenade des Anglais is where a demented man drove a truck moving down pedestrians on Bastille Day on the evening of 14 July 2016. The Nice attack killed 86 people and injured 458. Sound familiar? The whole area has since been reinforced to block vehicular traffic, involving bringing in full-grown palm trees with cranes.

I wound up spending several days in Nice, endowed with lovely weather. Took various local rides ferried to different parts on cool excursions with family into the hills looking back down over the city. I had particularly wanted to see Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat.

Nice, France inlaid stones

When it came time to leave, I finally noticed a text message on my cheap French phone, an invitation from a friend I’d met years earlier, who had actually invited me to stay at her and her boyfriend’s place. I texted her back explaining I’d missed seeing her text. In a little while I made my way to make a start, found some cardboard and what appeared to be the entrance to highways. I stood there a short time up in the hills. I saw a dread-headed girl across the street who when she crossed, approached to tell me she’s hitched a lot, and if I’m going to Aix-en-Provence, I’d have better luck down standing down by the water – once again before the Promenade des Anglais. I thanked her and walked down the hill. When I turned the corner I saw a group of people waiting for a bus a hundred yards away. I thought to myself, they’re probably wondering about what I was doing. Within several minutes, my first ride stopped. A smartly dressed man in a nice car on his way to Aix-en-Provence. I laughed to myself at how easy I made it look for the people standing there waiting for a bus. He made a phone call to his wife indicating he was on his way. I mentioned that I’d come from Montpellier to Nice and still was trying to figure out where to land. He mentioned that for using English, Aix-en-Provence would have better opportunities than Montpellier due to its larger influx of British because of the nearby seaport. He convinced me in fact. He said forget Montpellier, it’s mostly a college town, whereas Aix has an English speaking presence and a sophisticated flair.

mazza

 

Manu

The text was from a woman whom I’d met with her boyfriend 5 years earlier in Krakow, Poland. I was now getting out of the car upon receiving the text, only half an hour or so from Nice and 100’s of km before where I thought I was going. That was a great timed text, minutes before the Antibes exit. I had a splendid visit with these friends and their wonderful feline creatures. It was the therapy I needed, the playful cats along with friendly and inspiring conversation and inclusion.

Edwige and Bernards in Antibes

 

Edwige in Antibes

Edwige and Carol Antibe

I departed from my friends and the kitties in Antibes who I was already missing. Once again I got fantastic rides, two rides from Antibes. A young baker, boulanger, who told me stories of his life and his wife and 2 kids. At the moment that I noticed a sign for a rest stop I asked him whether there was another like it prior to where he was going. He wound up immediately pulling over, because he in fact was getting off soon, where the town was so small he explained I’d probably have very fewer ride possibilities than here at this highway stop. I parted farewell from this sweet guy and was walking into the rest-stop restaurant and showed my signs to the people as I was walking by them. They were a couple, and happened to be driving to Montpellier. I said that that’s where I live, but am going to Aix-en-Provence. They said they could take me there, it’s on the way. I hung with them a bit at the outdoor tables after I returned. We had a few interesting exchanges before getting in the car. A huge lovely white dog accompanied by a man entered the picture. I said, ‘elle est belle’, and the girl laughed, saying she has exactly the same type of dog, whose name is Belle. It’s unusual for a couple to offer a ride, very rare. They have to be really confident with one another, and these two were. Thomas and Gwendoline were very animated. At one point I mentioned out of the blue that I’d like to go to Istanbul, and they laughed, saying they’re going there next Thursday. They each engaged in conversation the entire time. We really connected. He owns 2 businesses in (IT), one which he originally started doing web design and the other advising companies on how to work more efficiently. She isn’t currently working. We talked the whole time, They were on their way to Montpellier to visit his father, and in fact he drove me into the center of Aix-en-Provence which he loves, and Gwendoline had never been.

Eight weeks earlier I wouldn’t have been able to understand but a quarter of what they were saying, now 8/10th percent. She spoke some English cuz she lived a year in New Zealand doing a WWOOF with baby sheep! She visited Australia too. She joked that she’s probably more conservative politically than he. He described that he believed the French president Macron would have more possibility to take a center stage in the global political arena. As we were driving into Aix from the highway, I commented that I believe trees may be more conscious than we are. To my surprise, Thomas the computer guy, heartily agreed, saying that he despises that people believe that they’re at the top of the pyramid of life, when in fact all life forms have intelligence. Thomas so much admires the town, that I decided after walking around a bit that for my saturday night, I’ll stay in Aix-en-Provence, regardless of where I may or may not sleep.

On this late summer Saturday afternoon in the street of Aix-en-Provence  I came upon a group of woman doing a spontaneous dance exercise; an an all female dance troupe. They were doing an improvisation exercise in their practice. I sort of guessed that this is what they were doing. Later when they were less involved in any presentations, I asked a few. One woman with eye that met mine with a sparkle in her eyes and large smile approached me and handed me a flyer.

She was in fact the director who organized this theatrical dance art group. http://cie-mariehelenedesmaris.com

I had decided to stay there regardless of not having looked for couchsurfers. It was a Saturday evening, it’ll be fun. I asked the right couple on my walk, who described several different options, pointing to areas on a map I had of specific areas to find things going on.

I went to a cafe to catch up on writing and organizing my pictures, and wound up hanging there into the late hours, with co-workers and guests. As the evening progressed, I was invited not only to stay that evening, but for an extended length of time, if I was demonstrating that I was doing the work I needed to do. I could now stay at this apartment there in Aix-en-Provence with these two brothers. However that vanquished at the point that the one breached my trust, and caused me to launch myself out back into the streets of Aix with the approaching dawn. It seemed like it might have been the semblance of a good thing, if not for the immediate security violation. One of the brothers was already in bed, it appeared. I was ushered into a room, fine, ah, but wait, no lock on the door. I waited before getting into bed with my pully and pack on by the door. listening for a few moments, when suddenly the door swung open, with me standing right there. I’m sure it surprised him as much as it did me; bursting into the room allegedly having misplaced his cell phone. Not only did this maneuver make me feel quite uncomfortable with the thought of sleeping there, but it also immediately dissolved that opportunity. So, I was heading out from Aix that morning, and still not sure what would define my future. This town hadn’t particularly welcomed me; no couch surfers, no housing possibilities and no tolerance for an opening in a bachelor den that was the epitome of neglect.

 

I hitched to Arles from Aix-en-Provence that morning. Maybe I’d go to Nimes (Roman ruins in both towns) on the same day.  The two cities located in the Occitanie region of southern France, were an important outpost of the Roman Empire. Nimes is known for its well-preserved monuments such as the Arena of Nîmes, a double-tiered circa-70 A.D. amphitheater still in use for concerts and bullfights. Its Maison Carrée white limestone Roman temple and Pont du Gard tri-level aqueduct are around 2,000 years old. I wound up staying in Arles instead.

Shortly after arriving at a good departure point in Aix, a woman stopped in her sleek car. I assumed the boy of about 11 sitting in the passenger seat was her son. She was an attractive, well dressed, middle aged woman who appeared professional, everything intact.  She was on her way to Nimes. The song that was playing on the alternative rock station was fairly pop, and each of the songs became progressively more hard-edged. The music didn’t seem to go with her appearance at all. The volume was so high that it impeded the ability to talk. When I asked, she staccato answered that she lives in Aix. That was my first and last question in an attempt to engage them in conversation. Her son and she didn’t say a word to one another the entire time.  She drove very fast and agilely on the highway on her way to Nimes, maneuvering efficiently. I was surprised she picked me up at all.  I pictured that she was dropping her son off at a midway point in an agreement with her ex, as they trade time with the child since divorcing. I decided that she was annoyed to have to drive him there, the hour and a half, now wait, 3 hour journey altogether to drop him off in Nimes and return; an invasion on any other activities she might have wanted to do on that Sunday. I didn’t ask. I let them ‘not talk’ to one another or me. I felt sorry for the kid. The music was quite loud. The silence was fierce.

Michael Jackson T-shirt
Always Be Yourself

I’m sitting in a cafe putting these pages together, sitting near the bathroom entrance. Many people flow by. One guy was waiting in line, a tall Arab guy, I saw in between the edges of his jacket a skeleton, and I said pointing, “is that Michael Jackson”? He said, yes and opened his jacket. I said, trying as I could in French, after multiple plastic surgeries that destroyed his cartilage, he’s now a skeleton. He said, exactly. He and I were both laughing pretty hard at this point as he was now walking into the bathroom, since it wasn’t supposed to be that obvious. I asked him when he came out to get a shot of the shirt, which is even more hilarious, saying below the image ‘Always Be Yourself‘.

In Arles I met a man whose eyes met mine from where he was perched on a balcony of this cloister.  I was like, what, are you WORKing there or what? Later we met on the stairs where he offered me an extra ticket to the last day of the photo exhibit there. He’s local. So, he’d waited until the last day of the exhibit to finally go see it. I had the impression that in this town that flowed regularly for most months of the year with tourists, that it was well stocked with woman accessories.  I wondered whether he took advantage of this, and lead a sort of double life. I was sort of expecting that we’d hang out together more, but he had other plans, probably a dinner gathering, or going home to dinner with his family. He bade his farewell and disappeared into the dusk, cutting through this building. Perhaps I seemed too risky, an American woman who happened into the town and didn’t know where she was going to sleep that night.  It was a nice exhibit. I wound up wandering away from the middle aged man who vanished to walk up a hill to find myself watching bats fluttering about and looking out over the valley, and instead talking to some young North African teenagers.

I had wandered around the periphery of the olympic Roman stadium and along streets in the town looking at the sites. I had gone into a lovely church where I learned some history. It was later, much later that my bed found me.  I was walking around a building and saw this little sort of fenced in courtyard that was merely following the contours of the rounded building. There was a low decorative iron fence around a small curved plot of soil, encasing a few bushes and a tree or two. I spotted large pieces of cardboard neatly wrapped up and tied together stacked vertically on the outside of this area. I learned years ago from a French (North African) truck driver that cardboard can be used to insulate from the cold. (Who I wound up driving with through Italy to Germany where during Ramadan, he’d chain smoke and start drinking his coffee before the sun came up or went down, and had packed a delightful gourmet assortment of foods home-made by his wife who packed them for his holiday fasting). I picked up the cardboard, pulled the pieces out, saw that they weren’t soiled and laid them out to form a platform to lay on. I had no sleeping bag. It wasn’t cold. I felt quite safe there and happy to not have to carry my backpack any more.  A pretty ‘sleepy’ town, I didn’t sense that anyone was going to look for me there. I didn’t sleep, but was comfortable. The night before in Aix-en-Provence I hadn’t slept at all.

I had already decided to stay in Arles that night. It was still pretty warm, September 25th, 2017. Later that evening, my resting place found me.

Arles rockin an auberge cardboard style at the hidden concave of a building

It was the last ride, Phillippe Lu, (great grandparents or grandmother came from China to Cambodia, where his parents were from. It was the intelligent conversation I had with him and his power of persuasion, which now convinced me after all that I should in fact plant myself in Montpellier; offering English courses with all the university separate buildings spreading over the north of town. He said I could make €15 to 20 per lesson. He texted his son to get the coordinates of an umbrella organization for all the universities called CROUS. He helped to give me some wording for a sign to put up. I since had looked up C.R.O.U.S. and gone there several times to get as much information as I could from what I’d written down while riding with him. They had info about housing, the university of lettres (languages) and basically I followed through and later wandered the labyrinthe of different buildings that a part of the university, that spreads across the north part of town that had been 50 years ago, fields. When I’d returned to Montpellier I was now homeless and searching through many different sources, mostly online, for housing. It was on the eve of the beginning of the month that one friend pointed out a site I’d already disregarded, judging that it was too expensive. I told him I’d already looked at that one, and it tends towards more expensive listings. I noticed that my friend had fr.fr in the beginning of the web address and mine us.fr, because I had first viewed it from the United States (I started viewing housing listings from the moment I booked an inexpensive flight). Turns out the subtle difference in the website made a huge difference in what was offered. The local listings offered a category unto themselves, anglophone families looking for English native speakers to live with them for reduced rent in exchange for some prerequisite time and activities. I’ve since found the most remarkably perfect situation, a win-win.

my signs for the return trip

Montpellier Zoo Jardin des Plantes and street pics

It started, or rather was continuing a year ago in another desert, in the high desert of New Mexico, bordering Colorado. Luna was Bill Light’s dog, who built his home in the canyon 5,000 feet above Santa Fe, New Mexico en route to the ski area. His wife had died a few years earlier. I stayed for several months in a cabin adjacent to his home which he built for his daughter. I lived there in the autumn of 2016.

I quickly became a fan of going on walks with his dog Luna. She was a fan of walks as well, and would actually come over to the cabin and tap on the door with her foot. Wow! She absolutely loved the excursion off the property and a long a path cutting through a narrow valley to the National Forest land. In the late summer twice with Luna, I was exposed to bears. It was because Luna discovered them, and barked them into submission.

 

Luna my friend at Bill Light’s cabin in Santa Fe New Mexico 2015

I lived in the cabin next to Bill Light’s home in my first months above Santa Fe, New Mexico where my nice landings began. Luna and I would cut through trails up to the National Forest land and then either move further into the canyon’s or launch up to the ridge. These became my sketching/water color excursions. Luna launched and climbed the hill with ease and I followed.

Bill who had an earlier bought with cancer which had gone into recess, got it again, and died from pneumonia since I had moved out. It’s a strange thing that he was there and actively doing all sorts of things, and now gone. I don’t know what happened with Luna, certainly she was completely at home in the mountains. I hope a neighbor took her in. Besides seeing lots of deer in the late summer and the few incidences with Luna barking a bear and her cubs up a tree, I would mt. bike into town from there, regularly. I cycled 7 miles up 5,000 feet to get to the property. I never used any bike lights or reflectors, despite the fact that there were no street lamps. My eyes would adjust whether it was a new or full moon. i figured it was a good way to balance out staring into a computer screen. I find a bike wherever I go and also animals that I love. Now there are stray cats where I am, and I’ve just landed, with muscle and sweat and help with several bike mechanics, a bike that I am delighted to ride.

Now there’s no dog present like in Santa Fe and the ones I affectionately grew acquainted with and loved immediately in Taos, New Mexico the following spring. There are a bunch of stray cats however here in Montpellier. It occurred to me to look for a used bike at this place I’d become a member of months earlier. Le Vieux Biclou. After asking a guy in the street when I knew I was in the vicinity of the bike shop if he knew of where it’s located, it turned out he was on his way there. There I spotted the mt. bike I wanted, and the following day during opening hours learned of its one major obstacle; a seat post jammed all the way down that wouldn’t budge. Several technicians, pounding and myself instructed to scrape off the rust of the now ejected post, and a day later going to another bike shop to get a lock appropriate for the rampant bike thievery in this town, I purchased bolts to replace the quick release wheels and seat, and was assisted in mounting the lock to the frame. After riding it the second time i realized that this bike runs flawlessly, enabling me to climb any steep slope with ease. Stoked!

I’ve since made my signs and printed them and edited my contact cards. I wanted to get this blog out, put up the signs in various excursions, and begin today on a singular path to complete my book between my father and mother’s birthdays. That’s pretty immediate. The difference, no noose around my neck to pay a rent that squelches my time and psyche.

And as is typical, I ask for donations. Thanks!   Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook & music composition

blogger in Nice

Climate Change for Skeptics or Believers | Sam Harris Interviews Climate Expert Joseph Romm

 

Two hours of attentive listening. Make the Time. It is so well worth it!

This two hour podcast is extremely informative. Sam Harris directs the questions in a very intelligible manner. His guest, Joseph Romm, an author, blogger, physicist and climate expert, is fantastically eloquent and articulate. Each word he uses, each sentence is jam-packed with information; displaying his knowledge about the subject of science, human behavior, economics and the politics of power and persuasion.

Sam Harris podcast audio interview with Climate Expert Joseph Romm

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is especially for people who don’t believe that Climate Change is caused through the actions of human beings. Yet is even more persuasive and full of facts for those of you who are already convinced that man’s actions are inextricably linked to Climate Destruction. His guest who wrote the book “What you Need to Know about Climate Change”

LISTEN to inform yourself, regardless of what your opinion is.

 

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz, blogger, currently completing by first eBook, musician and composer, has no income, zero. I spend time communicating these things, reading, researching, writing, conversing, because I am passionately interested in the subjects of in particular, saving the environment and habitats of animals from human greed and destruction. I have the time to ponder and consider these things, because my world is not centralized around an immediate family; I am single, and ready to engage in any task employing my language and communication skills, anywhere presently.

carol keiter squinting in the Montpellier, France sun

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DiSmayed | Who Knew ? What FeelTheBern Could Imply

I was not aware of any of this. Dismayed is the word that popped into my head.

THE TRUTH ABOUT BERNIE, OR WAKE UP BEFORE YOU #FEELTHEBERN (OFFICIAL RECORD) NOVEMBER 13, 20152NDVTREPUBLIC

After a mega list which reveals a well, horrific record, I see that…there’s a continuation of the same long list.

“Here is just a small sampling of Bernie’s bending over to please the Owners. Even as he turns on the “populist” rhetoric he votes for the establishment. Examples of this abound if you take the time to look beyond his empty and hypocritical rhetoric.”

…many of his deeds are not at all what he has communicated with his words…

Dismayed The word that popped into my head after reading this article.

“So what is to be done? First and foremost, withdraw your consent from the corrupt and collapsing U.S. of Empire’s broken two-party political system. Second, work to further all things local in your community – finance, fuel, food, education, the arts. Third, turn off the damn Tee Vee. And finally, instead of #FeelingTheBern, feel the turn – of a 21st century world in which the local will matter more than ever.”

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Simpson’s 2000 Episode Trump Buying the US Presidential Election

http://www.rollingstone.com/tv/news/watch-the-simpsons-clowns-donald-trump-in-new-short-20150708

Simpsons episode Trump Homer paid to vote from Rolling Stones article

So, I’ve had some kind of magical things happen with me, as well as hitting walls, or fear of hitting walls, of bureaucracy. Fear typically is of something one anticipates, even before hit happens, no? I’ve been warned as far as housing goes, about all of the things that one has to submit and prove; income source, bank accounts…

I decided that some things have happened in an uncanny way that have enabled me to do certain things, and I’m going to keep going with the serendipity.

The other day I went to look at a room in a group house, and because the addresses are not just even/odd on either side of the street, but the numbers don’t coincide directly. So I first was looking for this number and I thought, is this a joke, a cemetery? And then I found what I thought was the address, as this gate for automobile traffic was closing. I quickly slipped in. This place had several different numbered buildings. My directions were to go to building 3. Turns out, after not finding the name and getting some residents to make a phone call for me, and then waiting outside of the building, that someone else came out (probably who was watching me standing there) to tell me that this was not the address. Turns out that ‘bis 42’ meant, until 42, but not that specific number.

So I eventually go down the street and find this correct address.

It was later that day that I randomly wandered around different streets looking for a company with the logo of the phone I use to get assistance. I finally found a phone store, which pointed me around the corner to another place with computers to rent and phone stuff. Turns out that the phone had indeed already been registered by the Asian woman in the shop in Paris where I bought it. It was ‘false information’ from a man in a small mom & pop shop days earlier who gave me whatever information he felt like, just to dismiss me, and have some kind of answer, saying it wasn’t possible to charge this phone. ? It was because weeks earlier I had purchased an espresso in this tiny shop in my old neighborhood that this 12 or 13 year old kid remembered me who happened to be in this computer shop. I had been kind to him and I’m sure different from their usual clientele (sort of an Arab enclave). He was in this shop because his dad is a friend of the owner. He suddenly indulged in using the computers there (with the ok of the guy behind the desk) to help me; looked up on the computer the info, then walked with me to a shop that sells the credit for the phone (which was literally closing at that moment), then punched in the number…he did all of this stuff which would have taken me with the language barrier quite a lot longer, so that now I had a functioning phone. Monsif is his name. A very smart and precocious kid that volunteered his time, simply because he remembered me from this other neighborhood.

So, today I’m leaving the doctor’s office where i had my stitches taken out. I’m delighted that he mentioned that the med student who did this had done a good job, and all looked well. I had been bicycling on random streets and decided to walk back to enter into this courtyard where I saw a building that said something about green technology. I walked away, but was still standing in this arched entrance when a man walked towards the street from the courtyard. I asked him about this business, and he said, “c’est en fait une longue histoire.. well, it’s a long story.

He spoke in French. 20, 25 minutes later, this Arab man from North Africa first talked about how these companies are not given subsidies, not very supported by the government. And that this is due to corruption. He said it’s the same all over Europe as in the United States. The profit motive has tentacles reaching into the media, which control everything. And that people are like marionettes, completely distracted, thinking about their phones, sports, material things and simply not really thinking for themselves. He was talking about how this corruption all started with the Illuminati around 1784, (sometime in the 18th century) and that only a few people control most of the wealth of the world. That wars and destruction are all part of the same modus operandi. Frankly, except for the religious views he espoused (I always have a problem with these stark devisions describing God and Satan) and don’t quite believe in a final judgement day…However I fully embrace what he was saying about having transparence, of being consciously aware and making choices between good and bad, right and wrong and that each person is capable of this. That the more a person lies and compromises, the less peace they will have between their heart and mind.

So it was this dude that said that back in the year 2000 there’s an episode on the Simpson’s about Trump. This article from the Guardian “the episode of The Simpsons that in 2000 foresaw such a laughable outcome has begun looking unnervingly prescient”.

Simpsons writer says President Trump episode was ‘warning to US’

So, I just looked up 2000 Simpsons and Trump popped up. Holy F S, I hadn’t known about it. 16 years ago, https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2016/mar/17/simpsons-president-trump-prediction-was-meant-as-warning-to-us

I presently can’t access the original “Bart to the Future” episode here in France, which first aired on 19 March 2000

Simpsons 2000 episode President Trump warning the Guardian

After leaving him, walking into a general engineering school and presenting myself as someone who can use language skills. It was lunch time and one of the secretaries called the language director, a British woman, who came out to inform me that she’s filled her positions, but will keep my CV on file if I send it to her. The secretary was like ‘Radar’, in that she had already proactively written her email down too as she asked her to do it. And so I returned to home, and put together a cover letter, edited a few things on my resume (somehow I forgot to tell her when she asked if I have teaching experience, that I endured a year as a substitute teacher at the Santa Fe Public School system) which is in itself, rather epic, in that it’s a huge psychological test, each new day, with students that tell you, we already did that, as they opened up their phones or read Animé magazines, depending on the age level.

Anyway, I put together my cover letter and sent a resume link as well as one within the text of my email, and sent it. Now I’ve come back to this cafe with WiFi that I like, and hadn’t realized that it’s adjacent to this Jardin des Plantes of Montpellier, which I never had located, but had walked by numerous times, not having come from the angle where I saw the sign.

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook & music composition

Carol Keiter the blogger on return hitch from Taos to Santa Fe, New Mexico

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A letter to my sister | preciousness of life | Carl Sagan: freedom through scientific skepticism

I was looking over my blog stats and saw someone read this, a very early blog. I decided to post it, since it’s relevant, from a moral and political standpoint – uh, yes, at one time I believe, the two were part of the same fabric. uh, now wait a minute, maybe morality and political leadership, have rarely been paired, and that it is an exception! I mean, as long as royal leaders, and tyrants, and corporations have the reins, morality has not a fucking thing to do with the people who wish to maintain their power, control and profits.

I am certainly happy to hear from you. Naturally I think about you every time that I enter the room to look at the lovely paper lanterns you hung for Mother’s birthday party and the teepee you constructed in the yard – which I‘m still raking! Memories of things people share and artifacts that they leave behind imbue all of these things with the spirit of the person. I am sorry that we had difficulties communicating at times. I have not been ‘above’ reacting emotionally to someone’s emotional reactions towards me. However, that doesn’t mean that I can not attempt to move beyond my reactions to reach out with more compassion and understanding.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery author Le Petit Prince
The Little Prince

I went out with a family friend last night and afterwards, realized that he knows even more profoundly how precious life is, as he has lost both of his parents. Certainly, if we all had an acute awareness of death (sitting on our shoulders) – Carlos Castaneda style i.e. “the Teachings of Don Juan” – in each response to every moment, we would never be anything but kind to all people and creatures, at all times.

That sounds like a pretty heavy way to live. The context is not, to be continually fearful, but rather, continually present with the fact that every moment of life is precious. People need to accept the rights of others to be and perceive as they will. It is a rather large task, to put differences and competitiveness, jealousy, envy and judgments … aside. Yet it’s the only way for everyone to get along. (I just read in Salon dot com a rather scathing article about the writer Carlos Castaneda, saying that Don Juan was not only an astounding hoax, but that Castaneda went on to form a bizarre cult.) He nevertheless had strong poetic and spiritual points to emphasize in his writings.

It’s pretty much a life-long task, given the fact that all humans have a tendency to subjectively interpret and judge other peoples’ actions. I do it, we all do it, from personal complaints, grievances, expectations, disappointments on up to community and cultural, political and religious differences of interpretation, that result in the worst cases to prolonged wars and strife between ethnic groups and neighboring countries.

This appears to be one of the biggest challenges and aspirations for humankind; to look beyond differences and strive for understanding, compassion and kindness. The ‘tree-hugger/environmental activist side of me’ is kicking out judgements every time I see people’s actions or material opulence (not to mention hearing about plans for more gas drilling in the arctic etc.) which I perceive as offensive. I put them into a box I label offender/perpetrator; a personal judgement which is my own way of playing in the ‘us against them’ scenario. So, I’m as guilty as anyone. The obvious extreme is the fact that people are blowing each other up in the Middle East …. and that wars and conflicts and ominous actions of manipulation continue to proliferate worldwide, despite the fact that most humans have access to rather extraordinary tools.

We are technologically light years ahead of where we are emotionally!

As Carl Sagan mentions in this interview “A Way of Thinking” in which he delivers insights into the dangers in our present culture; based on the fact that we’re a science and technology-based culture, the inner workings of which few comprehend. That puts us in a position in which we are in danger of being more easily manipulated.

Sagan points out that science is a way of skeptically interrogating the universe. And that it’s dramatically important for each of us to ask skeptical questions about everything, particularly to those in authority; otherwise we are up for grabs by the next charlatan, political or religious, that comes along. He mentions that Thomas Jefferson said that people need to be educated in order to practice their skepticism, otherwise ‘we don’t run the government, the government runs us’.