Santa Fe, New Mexico Fiesta weekend September 9 to 11th, 2016

This past weekend the Fiesta was held in Santa Fe, New Mexico – September 9 to 11th, 2016.

This information below is from this wiki link describing the history of the Santa Fe, New Mexico Fiestas.

“Fiestas de Santa Fe has been held annually since 1712 to celebrate the Reconquest of the city in 1692 by Spanish colonists led by General Don Diego de Vargas (1643–1704). It is the oldest civic celebration of its kind in North America. The Spanish were earlier expelled from the city by neighboring Pueblo people during the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 and spent the next 12 years in exile in El Paso del Norte (now Ciudad Juárez, Mexico). The King of Spain appointed de Vargas to lead the exiled colonists in their reoccupation of Santa Fe by surrounding the city with cannons and threatening the Pueblo Indians residing inside with death. He re-entered the city on September 14, 1692; however the war for reoccupation of New Mexico raged on until 1694. Eight years after de Vargas’ death, a proclamation was signed to establish an annual commemoration of the resettlement.”

Santa Fe, New Mexico Fiesta weekend September 9 to 11th, 2016

During the parade, their was a float of rappers for Jesus who were local Spanish youth. I caught some of the freestyln’ of this girl.

and of a procession of horses going by. uh, it’s not exactly great audio, but funNy.

I took these pictures at the plaza during the evening of Saturday night the 12th and of the parade held the following day on 9/11/16. In the plaza there were members of the NYC police department who talked of their experiences as search and rescuers from September 11th on.

Here’s a link by the Santa Fe, New Mexico government that describes the city’s history.

“With a population of 70,000, Santa Fe, which means Holy Faith in Spanish, is New Mexico’s fourth largest city. Residents are primarily Hispanic, Anglo and Native American people.

Situated at 7,000 feet in the foothills of the southern Rocky Mountains, Santa Fe is the highest and oldest capital in the U.S. Founded between 1607 and 1610, it’s America’s second oldest city.

This link talks about the history of the United States and the first cities established in the country.

Preconquest and Founding (circa 1050 to 1607)
Santa Fe’s site was originally occupied by a number of Pueblo Indian villages with founding dates from between 1050 to 1150. Most archaeologists agree that these sites were abandoned 200 years before the Spanish arrived. There is little evidence of their remains in Santa Fe today.”

Hitchabout Tucson Arizona to New Mexico

clouds and palms in the Sonoran Desert

Saguaro cactus in Tucson, Arizona

I’ve been so absorbed with my new location that I haven’t had the opportunity to post my hitchabout highlights. Tucson sculptor Al Glann who has a studio in the Tucson Metalarts Village responded to my comment about his mastery in capturing the essence of creatures in his work, “the trick is to work quickly and to know when to stop”.

Al Glann sculptor at Tucson Metalarts Village

I enjoyed the arts of Tucson tremendously, yet my ambivalence peaked as new promises eviscerated. Final pushes lead to a pull towards New Mexico, where I’ve lived previously in several communities.

contrasts in light and dark driving from Tucson, Arizona to New Mexico

 

flickr hitchabout tuscon arizon link to pics

Ambivalence and the fact that I hadn’t quite dived in to the town (except in the pool at the apt complex where I lived which was eerily empty most of the time) was pointing me elsewhere – the ‘universe’ directing me with a number of different innuendos and nudges…and I wasn’t sure exactly when or where. Then I remembered that I have friends not so far away in New Mexico, in several communities there.

 

My intention, to hitch hike more or less 453 miles to Albuquerque, New Mexico from Tucson, Arizona, first stop.

I had the most successful hitch hiking experience EVER; efficiently arriving at each destination which I visualized, right within the timing I anticipated.

I had a great hitchhiking adventure with quick and easy rides. Just two, covering circa 500 miles.

 

Waited no longer than 5 minutes walking from my apartment, which I physically moved out of that morning, August 1st – now an extra bag in tow. Within yards of my residence, a woman stopped to bring me to the Interstate 10 entrance/gas station by there at my request. After leaving the gas station to walk to the highway entrance, a guy driving to Illinois picked me up as I was arriving there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I arrived to my first planned destination that evening, to stay with a woman friend in Albuquerque.

 

My driver opted to stay at a hotel and offered to drive me the next day to my next destination, Santa Fe. We had great fun discussing all sorts of things and talked non-stop until we were hoarse. He met both of my woman friends, and dropped me off at the door of my friend and former boss back when I lived in Taos, New Mexico. He’s a seasoned traveler himself. I listened to many stores. , It appears I was lined up to meet him and for us to influence one another. It seems that he’s brought me that much closer to wanting to simply trust traveling…even if I have no money.
Then to meet up with a friend and former boss in Santa Fe. Turns out she needed someone to cat sit for her and water her plants while she was making some road trips herself.

 

 

 

 
I’ve rolled into meeting a number of old and new friends who are moving me further towards collaborating and following my passions here. It’s gorgeous here. Bright blue skies, lots of fluffy clouds and also the rain storms.

And off for more art viewing.

Whitehawk Antique Indian and Ethnographic Art Show

Tucson ‘Christmas Lights’ Illuminated Year Round

lantern_lizard

lantern_quail

light_color_storyline_cactus_cactus

lit_sailboat_george_washington_painting_2

Bare with me in terms of the quality of the photographs. Some have managed to capture the essence, whereas others fall way short of what my eyes were seeing, because of the equipment (and lack of it) that I’m using. I mainly want to reveal that here in Tucson the ‘Christmas lights’ that I saw perusing around streets on my bicycle all over town in February, are still here in July. Tucson citizens and businesses have this creative decorative flair for their homes and businesses and downtown areas that are lit up, all year round. I love it. The most enchanting thing I found one evening, was a huge tree that looked like a fairyland with green laser pointed lights shining onto all of its branches. My camera just can not capture this, too bad. I’m using a Canon camera that is holding on and doing its best. And I’m doing my best without a tripod and all of the functionality of a fully working camera, with no special lenses. So I wince when I see a shot, take it, and it just barely captures in the darkness, what my eyes are seeing. In fact, I notice that in the viewfinder of the camera, the lights look more bright and then upon snapping the photo, it promptly dims. I’m also using an android phone for some shots that seems to function better for the dark shots, yet is obviously much grainier in texture, less dpi than the Canon.

illuminated_tree_branches_closeup

giraffe_sculpture

courtyard before Sinbad restaurant off University

illuminated_tree

restaurant_light_column

lantern_closeup

light_color_storyline_cactus_1

light_color_storyline_shotting_star_planets

Carol Keiter blogger and photographer shiny in the above 100º temperatures

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

the War on Terror is a malignant outgrowth of the Terror of War | Chilcot report: War on Iraq

Much is in the news about the recently released Chilcot report by Sir John Chilcot, chairman of the United Kingdom’s Iraq war inquiry. He was one of the bureaucrats in office during the time the United States and subsequently Great Britain governments’ decided to go to war on Iraq in 2003. The Chilcot report exposes the fact that there were no grounds to go to war on Iraq. There were lies, confounded by more lies that lead to this grave decision, which has subsequently ignited ISIS (whatever acronym you wish to call it), unleashing an insurmountable backlash of violence by groups coping with their own destabilization and horrors. Violence fueled by hatred in ever swirling spirals.

Carne Ross wrote for the New York Times July 6, 2016 Chilcot Report: How Tony Blair Sold the War

“Thus the invasion that was justified by an imaginary threat in Iraq helped create a crisis of global insecurity that will endure for a generation, at least.

The ministers and officials who enabled Mr. Blair to perpetrate this catastrophe must also bear blame. Brave after the event, many testified before Mr. Chilcot that they knew the war was a mistake — yet they went along with it. But without them, it could not have happened. The “threat” of weapons of mass destruction was repeated by many diplomats and officials even when they, like me, were well aware that the scant intelligence we had could not substantiate the claim.”

Matthew Schweitzer on the 8th of July 2016 writes in Mondediplio – the English version of Le Monde Diplomatique, Iraq’s trauma: the Chilcot inquiry

Schweitzer describes the history leading up to this, which has already been destabilizing the area years before. He mentions,

“In 1991, over 10 years before the events described by the Chilcot inquiry occurred, a United Nations report concluded that ‘the children of Iraq up to the ages of puberty are the most traumatized children of war ever described.’ The report arrived at the end of the first Gulf war, in which 20,000-35,000 Iraqi soldiers perished along with nearly 3,700 civilians.”

On July 7th, George Monbiot published on the Guardian’s website The Judgement of History: The Chilcot report is utterly damning; but it’s still not justice

“Mr Blair, the co-author of these crimes, whose lethal combination of appalling judgement and tremendous powers of persuasion made the Iraq war possible, saunters the world, picking up prizes and massive fees, regally granting interviews, cloaked in a force field of denial and legal impunity.

The crucial issue – the legality of the war – was, of course, beyond Sir John Chilcot’s remit…Justice is inseparable from democracy. If a prime minister can avoid indictment for waging aggressive war, the entire body politic is corrupted. In the Chilcot report, there is a reckoning, firm and tough and long overdue. But it’s still not justice.”

George W. Bush and Tony Blair the Guardian The US needs its own Chilcot report Trevor Timm

As a United States citizen born and raised in this country, who protested going to war in the streets back then, it occurred to me that I had read an indictment a few years ago from someone within the United States government exposing the US government’s ill conceived decision to go to war in Iraq. I googled, and came up with this article The US needs its own Chilcot report, written by Trevor Timm

“The former US president most responsible for the foreign policy catastrophe has led a peaceful existence since he left office. Not only has he avoided any post-administration inquiries into his conduct, he has inexplicably seen his approval ratings rise (despite the carnage left in his wake only getting worse).”

And in the politics of injustice, in which corpocrisy rules, it is really up to all of us to actually make a difference.

I beckon comments and suggestions regarding answers on ways to deal with the conundrum of hatred and violence. Perhaps if a large part of the citizens of the United States and Great Britain – for starters – would have the will and courage to make our voices heard and actually demand prosecution for the Crime of War, the consequences could be felt worldwide. That is, rather than passively watching this, actively making clear that you are behind persecuting these criminals – behind which are a bunch of corporations whose goal certainly was to invade Iraq for their own profit motives.

If the message sent to the rest of the world is that we care about other peoples lives who are embroiled in war and the injustice of it – rising above the political veil of democracy – to actually send clear messages of humanitarian love and peace, this in itself could begin wakening quite different responses from people who have only felt desperation and experienced hopelessness and horror.

I will promptly write in my digesthis blog about the concept of ‘othering’ (distancing oneself); a concept of Edward Said, mentioned by Naomi Klein in a larger context, together with the inspiring words of Akala regarding status quo racism built into Empire.

Another means of extracting ourselves from the rather undemocratic government we are in which is ensconced in the politics of money, as politicians are placed by corporate powers to parlay their wishes, is to have a GREEN SUSTAINABILITY REVOLUTION.

Perhaps as one person recently commented, the more that we involve ourselves in our own communities in DIY Doing it Ourselves: to grow our own food, actively engage in community building, build inexpensive systems to collect your own rain water, collect energy from the sun with solar, build community projects such as community gardens and windmills or whatever renewable technology is available and adaptable to the climate and geography of place…the more we will be energizing ourselves without paying into a corrupt system that is bent on continually receiving fees. And the more that people grow their own food and acquire energy from their own self sustaining systems, the healthier and happier and more independent they will be, so that they won’t need to support industries which are reaping huge monetary gains while delivering little. As people take responsibility for their own health and happiness, they will less and less need to buy into a system that keeps them locked into it: i.e. pharmaceutical industry.

Here I go again. Moved to create a blog, pulling together content from a variety of sources by established journalists who have done their rigorous investigative journalism, scrutinizing information to put it out there. I float these out to consecrate their points and add some of my own. I considered researching which print or online publication I could send a query to, to submit an article for which I’m paid, and I guess two factors are dissuading me.

The first, that I want to immediately get this information out there. Secondly, I realize that I am for the most part reading and re-circulating other peoples’ dredging labor involved in investigative journalism. Nevertheless, the more the information is circulated, the better.

Carol Keiter in Tucson, AZ

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

Warm Welcome to Obama by Trudeau and Canadians | Obama stresses Pluralism and Tolerance

On June 29th, 2016, President Obama joined with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, hosted by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for the North American Leader’s Summit. Obama was given a warm welcome at the event and his speech to the Canadian Parliament and Prime Minister Trudeau received a number of standing ovations. His reception was strong not only because he mentioned a number of Canadian icons, but also because of the resonance that the dignitaries felt when he mentioned that the US and Canada need to work together, leading the world in demonstrable ways to show racial tolerance and in committing to renewable energy.

US President Barack Obama Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto North American Leader’s Summit

Certainly there are transcripts, yet I’ve included the notes that I took, which are extracted highlights of Obama’s address. He stressed many of the values that our two countries share and went on to talk about international trade, security and climate change; mentioning that the latter is not an abstraction, but very real and happening right now.

President Obama stressed tolerance, pluralism and open arms to immigrants and refugees; specifically being inclusive with Muslim communities around the world to provide them with hope and opportunities.

Obama’s opening moments and warm response

He spoke of the need to respect the dignity of all people, especially those who are most vulnerable and of our commitment to a common creed. We must not waver in embracing our best values. Both of our nations are nations of immigrants who must continue to welcome people from around the world. The vibrance of our economies is enhanced through embracing refugees.

“We can’t label people as terrorists, who are the vulnerable people who are fleeing terrorism.”

Obama acknowledges Maryam Monsef Canadian (MP) member of parliament who is an immigrant from Afghanistan

With respect to his point of the obvious need to be tolerant and receptive to immigrants and refugees, Obama mentioned Maryam Monsef, an Incoming Liberal (MP) Member of Parliament sitting there in the session. “She was only three years old when her father was killed, caught in bloody crossfire at the border of Iran and Afghanistan. This link in the Ottawa Citizen includes an interview with her.”

Maryam Monsef Afghanistan immigrant now MP in Canada interview

Here are my highlights of his speech:

He started by claiming that the long border shared between Canada and the United States has maintained the longest period of peace of any border worldwide.

The transatlantic values we share as liberal based democracies are still strong.

The circumstances of Brexit may be unique to the UK, yet the frustrations people felt are not. Working things out on the short term is one thing, but the long term trends of inequality, dislocation and resulting social division can’t be ignored.

How we respond to the forces of globalization and technological change will determine the durability of an international order that ensures future prosperity for future generations.

We share the values of pluralism, tolerance and equal opportunity.

He referenced a quote; A country is something that is built every day out of shared values” and that.with respect to this, what is true of countries is true of the world.

If our recent financial crisis and recession taught us anything, it is that our countries do better when everyone has an opportunity to succeed.

If a CEO makes more in a day than an employee makes in a year, it is bad for the economy; that worker is not a very good customer for business.

If a young man in Ohio can’t pay his student loans or a young woman in Ontario can’t pay her bills, it tamps down on the possibilities of growth. We need to embrace policies that will lift everybody up.

The measure of an economy is how the people are doing.

We may think that drawing a line around our borders for more control is the way to go. However, restricting trade or giving in to protectionism in this 21st c economy will not work.

When combined with investment, research & development… we can spur the connectivity that makes all of us better off.

We need to look forward, not backward.

Thanks Canada for hosting the negotiations with the Cuban government.

Justin Trudeau and his wife responding to Obama’ words

Wealthy countries like ours cannot reach our full potential when other countries around the world are mired in poverty.

With our commitment to new sustainable development goals, we have a chance to end the outrage of extreme poverty. Bring more electricity to Africa, banish the Zika virus, our goal of the first AIDS-free generation. Working to replace corruption with transparent institutions that serve their people.

Development is not charity, it is an investment in our future prosperity. Our own security is enhanced when we step up for all nations to have the right to security and peace.

Multilateralism is not a dirty word. (In 1990, Robert Keohane defined multilateralism as “the practice of coordinating national policies in groups of three or more states.)

We will continue helping forces to push back comprehensively against terrorist networks.

We will work with partners around the world, in contrast to the hatred and nihilism of terrorists. I looked up the word Nihilism = the rejection of all religious and moral principles, often in the belief that life is meaningless.

Being inclusive in particular with Muslim communities; to offer a better vision, path of development, opportunity and tolerance, because they are and must be our partners in this effort.

We will be more secure when every NATO member contributes all of its forces. NATO needs more Canada.

Our two countries are leaders in humanitarian aid. We are going to work as hard as we can to help Syrians to live in peace.

The threat of climate change is not an abstraction. It is happening now. Last year he was the first US president to visit the Arctic. The tundra is burning, permafrost is thawing.

Climate change is not just a moral issue, it is not just an economic issue, it is an urgent matter of our national security.

Carbon emissions in the US are back to where they were two decades ago, even as we’ve grown the economy.

Alberta is working hard to reduce CO2 emissions, while still promoting economic growth.

If Canada can do this, the whole world can do this. We can lead the world. We need to bring it into force this year. The whole world can unleash economic growth while still protecting our planet.

Paris just had the most robust Climate Summit and we need to follow through with implementing these goals.

Let’s generate half our energy from clean energy sources within a decade. This is achievable.

We need to save the planet, and America and Canada are going to have to lead the way.
(As I listened to this I thought to myself that actually Germany is already leading the way in terms of implementing renewable energy. They stopped all nuclear power plants following the Fukushima incident. And in their green revolution, the southern city of Freiburg gets 100 % of its power from renewable energy.)

Freiburg, Germany is 100 % renewable, leads in green energy revolution

We believe in the right of all people to have the right to succeed in our society.

What a powerful message of reconciliation around the world when Justin, your government pledged a new relationship with the First Nations.

Democracy is not easy. There are those that offer a politics of “us verses them”, a politics that scapegoats others, the immigrant, the refugee, someone who seems different than us.

We have to call this mentality what it is: a threat to the values that we profess, the values that we seek to defend. It’s because we respect all people that the world looks to us as an example. Our Muslim friends who are our neighbors, serve in our government We need to stand up against the slander and the hatred of those towards people who look or worship differently. Obama mentioned that he has a bias (having two daughters) and wants all woman to have the same opportunities as men.

He professed to the audience not to shy away from speaking about these values of pluralism, tolerance and equality. These are universal values, inalienable rights, the rights of citizens to speak the truth, the rights of journalists to speak the truth.

A respect for the dignity of all people, especially those who are most vulnerable. Our commitment to a common creed. We must not waver in embracing our best values. Both of our nations are nations of immigrants who must continue to welcome people from around the world. The vibrance of our economies is enhanced through embracing refugees. We can’t label people as terrorists, vulnerable people who are fleeing terrorism.

We were all once strangers. Your grandparents were strangers; they fumbled with language, faced discrimination and had cultural norms that didn’t fit. At some point somewhere, your family was an outsider. We will continue to welcome refugees and ensure that we are doing so in a way that maintains our security. We can and we will do both.

Increase our support to central america.

The coming global summit this autumn on refugees, we must step up and meet the needs.

People of good will and compassion show us the way.

Obama gesticulating in his speech to the Canadian government and North American Alliance

How blessed we are to have had people before us, day by day who built these extraordinary countries of ours.

Barack Obama ended his speech saying “What a blessing”…and what a positive and lovely, gentle way to end of speech, to communicate such a positive concept to let this ripple through the room and the world’s stage.

Thank you Barack!

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

carol_before_hitching_to_SF copy

Nightingale Song and Coyote encounter on Midnight Prowl in Sonoran Desert

Last night, i was on my way bicycling – taking a different route home as always – to discover in the darkness (also daylight) all of these different lovely residences with cool plants and/or lighting at night here in Tucson, Arizona. I’m presently charging the batteries of my camera to go out on a night trek to capture the fact that all over in this town, strangely, there are ‘christmas’ lights that remain, uh, year round, as it is approaching the end of June and they’re all still there.

nightingale pics

I stopped to listen for quite a while to the song of a nightingale, then left, heard my phone beep, stopped to look at it and it occurs to me to go back to capture the sound via video. I went back to the bird. (I have since downloaded an app for audio recording) I stood there motionless with my one arm up in the air like the statue of liberty, my phone next to the tree, when I saw activity down the block. Too big to be a cat, a family dog no. As a figure in the darkness silhouetted against a wall approached, I realized it was a coyote. To my delight, there were at least four of them. One of them started trotting directly towards me from across the street, which caused me to turn around, which startled them. It darted away and several emitted some low barks. I turned the light of my phone on as I was still in video recording mode. Though I wasn’t successful in capturing them, as i shown my light towards them I saw several motionless pairs of illuminated eyes looking back at me as they stood still for a moment in curiosity, trying to figure out what i was all about. The nightingale was still singing away, a plethora of tunes, in such a dramatic range of sounds and octaves…what a wild few minutes of this evening.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhCRzwxVnv0&feature=youtu.be

I’ve just found out that the best means to get an mp4 out there to the world, is not by attempting to upload it to Facebook or WordPress, but to my (your) youtube channel, and then providing the link. voila. Here’s the link to the video, during which time at 2:45 into the tape, while capturing the nightingale’s melodies, you here the barks of the coyotes.

This is a dark video, for the purpose only of capturing a tiny fraction of the immense diversity of song of the nightingale.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_nightingale

“The common nightingale or simply nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos), also known as rufous nightingale, is a small passerine bird best known for its powerful and beautiful song.”

coyotes difference between dog, wolf, coyote, jackal and fox

Coyotes are slick, coming into the town during the night. It was about midnight. How cool! I then got on my bicycle to follow them, found one lagging behind that darted into bushes. Tucson is mostly flat, one story houses. I’ve seen baby quails, lots of lizards, have seen a coyote during the daytime by a dry river bed, but not yet any javelinas (wild pigs). I love nature!

http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/coyote/

“The coyote appears often in the tales and traditions of Native Americans—usually as a very savvy and clever beast. Modern coyotes have displayed their cleverness by adapting to the changing American landscape. These members of the dog family once lived primarily in open prairies and deserts, but now roam the continent’s forests and mountains. They have even colonized cities like Los Angeles, and are now found over most of North America. Coyote populations are likely at an all-time high.”

Tucson, Arizona is located in a small fraction of the immense area that encompasses the Sonoran desert.
https://www.desertmuseum.org/desert/sonora.php
Sonoran desert region presented by the Sonoran Desert museum.

Sonoran desert region and its subdivision -sonoran desert museum

I have since downloaded an audio app, to record the unfathomable richness and amusing song of nightingales. 🙂 delightful encounter!

Don’t know why it sounds like i’m standing next to a fast moving river – – ha aha – – here in the desert. poor audio. i’m working on it.

Carol Keiter the blogger, musician and composer

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

Happy Summer Solstice 2016 & Full Strawberry Moon

A rare coincidence: The full ‘Strawberry Moon’ meets the summer solstice

Strawberry Full Moon coincides with a full moon during the summer solstice

Today is the longest day of the year, Monday June 20th, 2016. The solstice will be peaking at 6:34 p.m. EDT. When a full moon also coincides with the Summer Solstice, it’s called a Strawberry Moon, named for when Algonquin tribes used the solstice as a signal for when fruits were ready for picking.

Full Moon in Sagittarius June 20th 2016 mysticmamma

This mysticmamma article says: “Alchemical magic this second FULL MOON in Sagittarius coinciding with the SOLSTICE!

Both SUN and MOON at their peak align to bring us illumination of the patterns that need to be rewoven within our own psyche, within our relationships and within the greater collective Reality. The arrow of Truth is swift and on point bearing the way.

On this ¤FULL MOON SOLSTICE¤ day, take time to be still and connect your heart to the beating, pulsing heart of the cosmos. Like our ancestors before us, we are reminded that we are part of it, an intrinsic part of the cosmic weave.”

11 Things About the June Solstice

On that note, find a summer solstice gathering near you!!!

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations to her writing, eBook, music composition & art

Carol Keiter the blogger, musician and composer

Letter to my Sister Joan | “I’M IN” British Referendum to Join EU | Trump: Fascism arrives in Amerika | Prince Ea Future Generations Sorry | ww right wing political responses prey on fear and xenophobia…forgetting history of colonialism and capitalistic expansion

I just had a FaceTime conversation yesterday with my sister (8 hours ahead in time) in England. Because of my sister Joan’s intelligence and sensitivity, we always have had interesting conversations about an extensive number of topics through the years. In this conversation, many different subjects came up. She and her husband live in York, England, ‘whitey white’ as she calls it. Living in England the past 5+ years – not in London where the metropolitan nature tends to be more tolerant and progressive – but in smaller towns mostly in Yorkshire, she’s seen the inbred, territorial bigotry of Englanders’. Where not only does the intolerance speak out against rivaling neighboring townships, but also occasional negative remarks regarding ‘Yanks’ = MerKons (that’s my condescending label for Americans who display similar racism), and ‘Paki’s’ = Pakistani people whose labor keeps Great Britain running, just as Mexicans are omnipresent within the United States labor force; in kitchens and various other under-payed positions. They do the jobs Americans don’t want to do.

I’M IN button in Great Britain regarding the referendum to join the European Union

Our conversation started as she held up a button to my view, which she had had pinned on her shirt, which because of its political and specifically economic implications, those in her group were vehemently opposed to. She mentioned that the number of Polish immigrants in England is one of the contentious issues. For those against Great Britain joining the EU, their reasoning is that immigrants will take their jobs. It’s however mostly an excuse, masking their bigoted and xenophobic response; besides taking our jobs, refugees may taint our race (uh, destroy the purity of whiteness). Sound familiar? I’m not alluding to the Holocaust, but of the frightening prospect of the right wing parties popping up all over the West. We’ll get to that in a minute.

My sister was ‘not allowed’ to join the group which she’s been attending, because of her refusal to withdraw her show of support for the Great Britain referendum to join the European Union, by taking off the ‘I’M IN‘ button pinned on her blouse. It’s sort of a holistic therapy group; all about using tools such as meditation and the arts and therapy to develop one’s awareness and healing. It was ironically this group who cast her out, because of their intolerance and fear.

Here’s some info about the referendum and the split it’s gouging among English citizens, which is informative for those of us not directly involved in their politics.
The UK’s EU referendum: All you need to know. Among the information in there was this, started in Belgium:

What does Brexit mean?
It is a word that has become used as a shorthand way of saying the UK leaving the EU – merging the words Britain and exit to get Brexit, in a same way as a Greek exit from the EU was dubbed Grexit in the past.

I found this article written in the Guardian by Oliver Imhof, “Why I’ll leave the UK if Britain votes no to Europe”. “As a German living in London, I love the flexibility of life here, if not the food. But I won’t live in a country that turns its back on the postwar consensus of solidarity and human rights.”

Joan points out that for the most part people don’t want more Polish immigrants to take their jobs. She has a local story about Polish workers kicked off of their jobs in the fields, which then the British ultimately didn’t want to do themselves. Her point stating that the Brits, rather than isolating themselves, should be more transparent and resilient, open-minded & open-armed to the current worldwide refugee crisis. As one of the Western powers who, uh hum, propagated the policy of bringing immigrant workers into their country in the first place, to do the low-paying, shitty jobs – through slavery and brining in workers from the countries they subjugated. Currently this subject has struck a nerve, all over the Western world as revealed in their politics. Yet the country forgets its own history, of colonial expansion as a super power at that time, for their own economic gain. Same as the trend of American and other multi-national corporations to downsize and outsource their jobs; setting up shop in remote parts of the world to obtain labor at slave wages and pollute those areas that are out of one’s own back yard.

In the meantime, I came up with this Guardian article,
“Polish migrants to strike and give blood to demonstrate importance to UK”

My sister mentioned that locally someone wanted to – and succeeded – in kicking some Polish people out of their jobs in local farms…and then no Brits wanted to do the work. Point is, if in this case the British people don’t want the Polish, Pakistani, Indian immigrants or Syrian refugees….they wouldn’t have much of a rich and diverse culture now would they?

She asked me, “Do you know how many Polish people are in Britain?” dunno, well, – now wait a minute – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poles_in_the_United_Kingdom ‘bout a million.

Because my sister and her British husband go regularly to France, the topic of the violence among football hooligans in Marseille came up. Deaths occurred there at a soccer match between the French and the Brits. While talking, I googled and sure enough, found these headlines: http://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/euro-2016-violence-running-battles-as-violence-breaks-out-in-marseille-while-england-fans-chant-isis-a3268166.html
“Euro 2016: Violence breaks out in Marseille as England fans chant ‘Isis, where are you?”

Fans Clash in Marseille – Brit Football Hooligans shouting racist remarks in France

We talked about this with distaste, then she mentioned that that same day, she had been accused of being a Yank in a pub, and harassed for it. The lofty talk of Britain not wanting more Polish people to come into their country, or any other immigrants or refugees for that matter, lead her to mention this, sort of regurgitating what reasons lie behind these voices that are opposed to this, which demonstrate their violence and racism.

She then asked me pointedly, “How many refugees do you think there are in the world today?” to which

I answered, uh, 8 million? “No”, she answered, “60 Million S I X T Y M I L L I O N.”

I offered the information that many of the refugees are fleeing their countries because of either ecological / climate issues or economic ones, or war… all direct and indirect repercussions of the business and commerce activities of the Western world; i.e. EXON Mobile, Shell Oil….I immediately googled that one while we conversed, and there it was on the Atlantic (formerly Atlantic Monthly), “Violence Has Forced 60 Million People From Their Homes”

Joan mentioned that if each town would take in say 500 or 5,000 people -respective to their population – the worldwide problem could be mitigated and assuaged. I added that if the EU and UN would work together to investigate communities and their geographical conditions, to find locations to set up research and development for appropriate renewable technologies, and then assign and relocate people into communities. Rather than all of the deaths, these people who are fleeing problems that are impacted by the West, and relocated in a civilized manner.

The western world could facilitate helping refugees to integrate into jobs serving all of mankind; healthier environment, healthier relationship with all life, healthier relationship with one’s own immediate community. And all of the deaths that we hear about and then look away from, due to the black market of refugee trafficking, would end.

Basically, if it was you’re dad, brother, mother, child, uncle that was trying to flee, you would want this operation to be legal and facilitated with regulations and hospitable treatment.

It’s a world crisis that is a direct result of activities of the ‘Global North’; the northern hemisphere of superpowers that perpetuate activities that consistently harm the environment, think about only short-term gain instead of long-term consequences and continue to drive a wedge of ‘economic rifts’ by keeping things in the status quo; profit driven by greed.

This will change, it already has been.

Because of his eloquence and all-encompassing message, I need to place this here> Prince Ea’s music video rap which poignantly says it like it is.”
Prince Ea speaks to Future Generations: Sorry“, describing what a future generation may come across, when the Amazon Rain Forest becomes the Amazon desert…or when a tree is a thing of the past. He then stops himself mid beats to beckon the audience that it is not too late, if we all resolve to do something.

Prince Ea Music Video Dear Future Generations Sorry

Naturally, our conversation lead to discussing the present political scenario. “Do you know that Trump could become President?” she said, accusatorially. We talked about the frightening thought of a bigot and zealot entering the White House after the graceful and articulate Barack Obama is ushered out. I mentioned the fact that there’s been a wave of right-wing parties propagating in Europe; bringing up the example of how the Netherlands which formally had been heralded for their open-minded nature – a country who historically have had open arms to immigrants and a very accepting and tolerant nature, have now rebounded towards closing their doors. In 2004, the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh (a distant relative of Vincent Van Gogh) was killed by a Muslim extremist. Shot dead – his freedom of speech and art the reason for exterminating his life, because the shooter had interpreted van Gogh actions as an insult to his religion. Dutch citizens have since collapsed their openness and are up there among the most fearful in Europe with their anti-refugee stance. Joan brought up Marie Le Pen in France. I had recently heard that Austria just had a quasi facist right-wing political party enter the scene (which either threatened to, or have come into power). Sorry, no time presently to look up all the sordid details of the various different European government political systems. Just that it’s a fact that there’s been a sweep of right wing zealots all over Europe, capitalizing (pun intended) on the public’s fear of economic instability and xenophobia. I went to the news source in English for Le Monde Diplomatique, Mondediplio, and there in this issue is an article by one of their regular writer’s “Why the far right is on the rise” by Serge Halimi. His first line of the article answered my mention of the recent Austrian election, “Before long a domino is going to fall: a far-right candidate failed to become president of Austria by just 30,000 votes.”

In the American political race, Trump is a man who is a joke and buffoon to many. Yet, he’s been getting huge amounts of free advertising and air time, because of the fact that he’s so outrageous. In fact, his absurdity and complete lack of morality and diplomacy, is actually serving as his tactic. He reaches his audience through the lowest common denominator; machismo, speaking to peoples anger, and playing upon their fear and insecurity. He’s already been well-versed in illusion in the arena of television, a stage he’s been very familiar with and knows how to play his part well. He can draw audiences and ratings because of how politically incorrect he his, nothing barred, says whatever he feels and the more inane and the more he taunts, the more amusing he is to his audience. Like regalia to adorn his stage, his wife and daughter are eye candy accoutrements to smile and wave. Having hammed up his tv personality, he knows how to rip out ugly statements that are dramatic in their shock appeal.Somehow, Americans are either dumb and dumber or so conned that they don’t see through his lies, or realize that he’s playing a ‘reality tv’ sitcom comedy called “running for president”, without any capability whatsoever of diplomacy, empathy or strength as a leader whose actions could inspire the world. He’s a con artist who dares to say what he thinks – which i guess is the reason that many people praise him for being real. Perhaps this is because many people cower about saying what they truly think, and therefore look up to someone who does because they don’t want to take the risk or are too lazy to bother to look up the facts to see if what he is saying is actually accurate. In fact, much of it is false, and somehow people are getting snowed, blinded by his bravado. This brazen man, by his uncouth statements with hatred and scapegoating etched into his sarcasm, could easily uncoil into the makings of a tyrant; his overblown ego and harsh statements and emotional instability are the makings of another Hitler. I believe that people prefer to believe what they want to hear. So instead of a gracious and educated, genuinely diplomatic and eloquent Barack Obama, here’s this sarcastic prankster who is all smoke and mirrors. I just happened upon this article on a German friend’s Facebook page, who is one of many people who pay attention to what is happening all over the world, as opposed to having their heads buried in the sand…although that may be what he’s doing right now on a vacation with his wife in the white sands of the Maldives. This article in The Washington Post articulates exactly what I was saying. uh hum. This is how fascism comes to America

I mentioned an article I just read about how emotionally unstable and narcissistic Trump is, the current Republican nominee for President in the USA. Yet I also adamantly responded with a no, he will not become president, because of the eloquent words of a consciously aware and articulate woman whose short but intense youtube talk revealed. I’m not typically aligned with the typical psychic, but this woman is simply an articulate and intelligent person speaking the truth. Psychic and Medium Danielle Egnew sayin’ “2016 Psychic Presidential Prediction – You may be shocked!”

-.-.-.-.-.-.- Here’s the actual letter I wrote to her following our conversation, with only a wee portion of it censored!

subject: You have special gifts to share with the world – yes, ‘I’M IN’

Hi Joan,

i’m so happy that I looked at the clock and decided to try you on FaceTime. It sounds like you are going through so many different feelings right now between Carole Anne whom you just befriended nearing her death, the incident in the pub, the fact that you couldn’t go on your vacation with Graeme and then not being allowed in – because you stood up for yourself and your right to freedom of speech and choice.

You also have had many fortunate things woven within these stories, but presently the more hurtful ones are screaming out. I’m so happy to talk with you. we have always been communicative through all of the years of growing up and you working at CBS so that we talked so frequently sharing many things. I’m glad to still share this with you and have always learned and expanded my awareness through your insights and intelligent looks at the world.

You can feel like an underdog and feel resentment…I have basic misanthropy because i’m often mostly disgusted with what humans have done to the world…however, WE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO NEED TO MAKE OUR VOICES HEARD.

It is not just for you or my own egos, it is because the world, many many people are either completely unaware, ignorant, stupid or just conned through habit and their lifestyles (kids, economics) to not have or make the time to reflect and contemplate about the actual things happening in the world. therefore we need to speak out.

you have the intellect, insights, wit, sarcasm and you can start writing (4 minutes a day) the notes towards a comedy/satirical podcast about these things, and then edit them and put together a 4 minute/5 minute piece about the hypocracies. you could make it funny as hell. for example, the I’M IN button, and the fact that you were ostracized from a fucking health and well-being therapy group for speaking your mind! that’s a joke as a start!

I love you. I worked on music, then realized, oh shit, this really, is not working, so I started yesterday to bit by bit repair it – creating loops that are 1. the same length, listening carefully to the beats to match them, cutting out stuff that is unnecessary…and sure enough, I’m learning through the process of doing it. Instead of shrinking in embarrassment for what i put out, i’ll fix it and show the tremendous improvement and that process alone makes me proud. I have been way too much of a perfectionist all my life, which stopped me from even beginning often. well, not really, but it’s not going to throttle me any more. I read two weeks ago about a kid here who’s made a big success; 1. his parents taught him to never, ever be afraid of failure, because that is how you learn. 2. his father drilled into him a quote the gist of which is that he who hesitates, could wind up dying before they get their masterpiece out there!!!! don’t hesitate, just dive in.

Well, you’ve always dived into things, you’re not timid about that. I just say to remind you as well as mother, to be thankful and have gratitude for all of the positive things that you can list. There are many. 1. the fact that there in the most potentially miserable 2 weeks of your life in the hospital, there you met Carole Anne, who befriended you, with whom you bantered, and with whom you gained trust, sympathy and a bond, so that she gave you this beautiful ring to always, always have her close to your heart.

Think if you can, about how lucky you are for having the fucking brain, insights and perspective that you have, so that you can laugh at these poor hooligan close-minded Brits and make a joke about how pathetic they are!!! and remember that you were having a pleasant exchange with nice reciprocation with the other people in the bar.

it is very easy to hone into and only exaggerate the negative, like when a person has a wound, it is that which nags and raises itself to one’s consciousness above everything else. But do something with these wounds, with this awareness Joan, to help to heal the world.

Yeah, and it is devastating that Mother couldn’t be in her own home – i even think that when one MUST walk and MUST move around more, they DO. Anyway, I would have had her living with a Guatemalan sister and brother who fled as children refugees into the United States, who are by nature family oriented and loyal. They could get basic healthcare training, and because mother speaks Spanish, she would love the company….but this is no longer the case. We can encourage the new girl to take her out for a walk and to perhaps drive her around to be in the vicinity of trees, woods, to hear birds, see sunlight moving. She will be there for a long block of time, 2x a week, so I’m sure she could have authority and time to do this.

Hang in there and put that energy into bit by bit creating a skit! or new designs! You are very creative and have special gifts to share with the world Joan.

Love,

Carol

Carol Keiter the blogger pensive

Appropriate photo following yet another mass shooting last evening in Orlando, Florida in the United States; slaughtering 50 people because of hatred.

nomadbeatz aka Carol Keiter ~ As an avid blogger who is presently picking up where I left off to complete my eBook and beginning again to compose music, I ask you rather unambiguously and unabashedly to please donate, if you are able. !-))

Sovereignty of Consciousness | Psychoactive Plants as Guides | Graham Hancock TED talk | Rupert Sheldrake TED talk

Graham Hancock’s banned TED Talk on The War on Consciousness deserved all of the applause that it received. He talks of human consciousness as emerging through ancient and sacred visionary psychoactive plants, as teachers in themselves. Yes, the plants as the guides, that have been used throughout history, including among indigenous populations around the world today, as sacred vehicles to discovering our own human dimension of consciousness.

Graham Hancock – The War on Consciousness Message of Mother Ayahuasca plant

“By demonizing whole areas of consciousness, we deny ourselves the possibility of our own human evolution. We can’t claim to be free, until along with the right to freedom of speech, we demand the right of adult sovereignty over consciousness. We have the right to make sovereign decisions with respect to our own consciousness, including the responsible use of ancient and sacred visionary (psychoactive ) plants.”

Graham Hancock – The War on Consciousness various ancient traditions use of psychoactives Soma of the Vedas

I see that Graham Hancock has written numerous books, which is revealed in his website. He declares that
ayahuasca is not alone, but part of an ancient worldwide system of targeted, careful, deliberate, responsible alteration of consciousness. Kykeon used in the Eleusinian mysteries of ancient Greece, Soma was a beverage used in the Vedas of India, perhaps a psychoactive fungus, the Amanita muscaria, DMT, the Lotus used by ancient Egyptians in their “Tree of Life” belief system and shamans of indigenous peoples presently use various mind altering substances such as ayahuasca and peyote or psilocybin mushrooms…to create a relationship of what the ancient Egyptians called ‘Ma’at‘, balanced harmony with the universe.

Maat ancient Egyptian goddess of truth, Maat or Ma’at was the ancient Egyptian concept of truth, balance, order, harmony, law, morality, and justice

 

I participated in a peyote ceremony while residing in Taos, New Mexico. The sacred ritual took place in a tee pee from dusk to dawn on the reservation of the Taos Pueblo.

the peyote ceremony took place in a Teepee – Tipis are typical of the Plains Indians

I was invited by a young Native American girl whom I had gotten to know. I knew of these ceremonies years earlier, and perhaps was motivated to attend one more for recreational reasons. The opportunity didn’t arrive until after a I experienced being in an automobile accident which dramatically caused me to reassess my life. It was only then that the possibility arose. It is said, you don’t choose the peyote, the peyote chooses you.

When I arrived at the designated time and place, she was not to be found. I was nevertheless accepted. I accompanied a woman to her kitchen while she prepared for the ceremony cutting corn husks which had been blessed. These rectangles were then rolled with tobacco, which were each smoked at the onset of the ceremony, as our individual and collective prayers were carried by the rising curls of smoke. The ceremony was conducted by the Elders, to heal someone in the tribe who had asked for this to take place. We each directed our thoughts – prayers – towards this person’s healing as well as our own.

I talk about this in my blog Burning The Man: A Utopian Requiem describing that the ceremony was steeped in ritual movements. I had been assigned to an individual next to whom I sat in the circle, to ensure that my movements would not alter the Feng Shui deliberacy. Instructed to simply bow forward if I needed to regurgitate, that the fire-keeper would take care of this, as he methodically fed the fire in the center of the human circle for the duration; raking the coals and shaping the burning embers from a thin crescent moon in the beginning, to a full circle by its’ end 12 hours later.

Graham Hancock implores offers that “We have no right to go around the world imposing our version of democracy, while we nourish this rot within the heart of our own society. It may even be that we are denying ourselves in the most vital step in our own consciousness.”

Graham Hancock – The War on Consciousness Tree of Life of Ancient Eqyptians and use of DMT

Hancock mentions that the Amazon is a horrific example of neglect; where the lungs of the planet are being dismantled; clearing the forest to grow soybean to feed cattle, so that we can eat hamburgers. “It’s an insane global state of consciousness, an abomination.”

Graham Hancock – The War on Consciousness Amazon rainforest – the lungs of the earth – cleared to plant industrial soybean to feed cattle to make hamburgers.

The rot he’s speaking of is witnessed through alienation, separation, a disconnect to nature and other life forms in addition to other humans. As witnessed by gun violence, wars, in a culture in which there are more lawyers, psychiatrists and pharmaceutical companies prescribing drugs to tame a whole host of modern so-called psychiatric dis orders, which themselves are as much attributed to the alienation that our society, consumed with material acquisition, competition through material appendages and the material interpretation through the sciences of the world around us. The need for weapons, protection, which the pharmaceutical military industrial complex insights, and the disintegration of relationships and recognition of the interrelatedness of all species and awe and respect of all life, is feeding the ego and enforcing competition rather than cooperation.

Graham Hancock – The War on Consciousness by demonizing areas of consciousness we deny our own evolution

He mentions the slew of drugs that are accepted in this culture, stimulants like teas, coffee and the sloppiness of alcohol, yet visionary plants that have been used in religious ritual for eons and which are part of the emergence of human consciousness, are suspect and illegal.

 

Rupert Sheldrake is a biologist and author. He proposes that “everything depends on evolving habits, not on fixed laws. His hypothesis of ‘Morphic Resonance’, is that everything in nature has a collective memory; resonances are based on similarity – even crystals have a collective memory.”

Rupert Sheldrake on Morphic Resonance – Self-organizing systems inherit a memory from previous similar systems

He elaborates on the reasoning behind this lack of comprehension, talking about the The Science Delusion. Sheldrake approaches the subject by questioning the authority of the tenets of science, turning the basic scientific materialism-based dogmas into questions.

He proposes that this is the default worldview worldwide, of educated people….and proceeds to demonstrate how utterly non-factual these rules are.

…revealing in his TED talk that in fact the opposite is true, to what is proposed, that:

1. nature is mechanical and machine like – nature, animals & plants are like machines, brains are genetically programmed computers

2. matter is unconscious- no consciousness in stars, galaxies, animals and plants

3. the laws of nature and constants of nature are fixed; they will be the same forever

4. the total amount of matter and energy is always the same – it never changes in quantity – the big bang, everything sprang up out of nothing

5. nature is purposeless; there are no purposes in nature and the evolutionary process is completely purposeless

6. biological heredity is material; everything is inherited form the genes

7. memories are stored in side your brain as material traces; everything you remember is in your brain, modified proteins

8. your mind is inside your head; all consciousness is the activity of your brain and nothing more

9. psychic phenomena like telepathy are impossible; your thoughts and intentions can not have any effect at a distance because everything is inside your head. therefore, all psychic phenomena is illusory; people are deceived by coincidences or wishful thinking

10.mechanistic medicine is the only kind that works; complimentary and alternative therapies can’t possibly work (due to the placebo effect)

In my digesthis blog, presently I write about food sovereignty.

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz ~ As an avid blogger who is presently picking up where I left off with my eBook to complete it and and beginning again to compose music, I ask you rather unambiguously and unabashedly to please donate, if you are able. !-))

“The Lie We Live” | short film by Spencer Cathcart | “Le Mensonge dans lequel nous vivons” | “Die Lüge die wir leben” | “La Mentira En Que Vivimos”

The Lie We Live
short film by Spencer Cathcart

http://www.trueactivist.com/this-video-exposes-the-corrupt-world-were-living-in-but-we-can-change-it/

short film by Spencer Cathcart http://theliewelive.blogspot.com

français

Le mensonge dans lequel nous vivons

deutsch

español
“The Lie We Live – La Mentira Que Vivimos”

Script for the film

In front of you, you have access to more information than any human in history. But you probably don’t care. That curiosity we once had in the world is gone.

Why is it the older we get, the less questions we ask? Throughout history we’ve always accepted whatever world we were born into. And if anyone tried to question our world, they were ridiculed. It’s only years later we look back and ask ourselves: how could anyone accept that world?

Today we call ourselves developed, as if we have nothing left to learn. But in a hundred years, when people look back at our generation, will they too ask themselves: how did anyone accept that world? 

It’s no secret our world is full of problems. We rally, we protest, still the problems only seem to grow. And maybe, because they stem from a much larger problem we fail to see.

Why do we search the universe for new life, when we can’t even coexist with the life on our own planet? It’s as if we expect any life out there to be just like us. As if life can only be human. How is it in a world with millions of species we see ourselves as the only one that thinks, feels, or matters? It’s a reoccurring theme in our history, the belief that some life is inferior to others. We’ve always struggled to accept those unlike ourselves. To recognize because something’s different doesn’t mean it should be treated differently.

When we look at other life, we say our technology makes us more advanced. Yet all we seem to advance is the destruction of the world surrounding us. You look around and there’s little life to be seen. Most animals we know, we’ve only witnessed on screens.

It’s funny how we call them “animals” but ourselves “humans”. As if we’re two different life forms with nothing in common. We see them as beasts and ourselves as people.  Calling their actions barbaric, yet our actions tradition. But while they kill to survive, we kill even as we call ourselves civilized. And we don’t just kill; we raise life to be killed. Not because we need to. Because we like the taste, the look, the feeling. And when you see life as an object of value, it’s hard to see the value in life.

Why is it when some animals are killed it becomes a headline. But when others are murdered, we don’t blink an eye? Why are we enraged at the thought of a culture eating dogs? But laugh when another culture refuses to eat cows?

Our idea of normal may change depending where you are, but our desire to be normal has always been the same. It’s only when the norm changes that we criticize our former ways. Today we live in a nation where it’s normal to get cancer; to become obese; to develop heart disease. Clearly there’s something wrong with this way of life we call normal. But it’s all we’ve ever known.  

For as long as we can remember we’ve eaten animals. Growing up we’re taught meat gives us protein and makes us strong.  Yet so do many foods we don’t need to kill for, but we’re not told that. We hardly hear about the numerous studies showing the diseases associated with meat. Or all the food and land we waste fattening the animals we eat. When you drink the breast milk of another animal your whole life it doesn’t seem odd. It just seems normal. After all, it’s what we’ve always done and we don’t question tradition. We embrace it. But if we never questioned the traditions of our past, we would never evolve.

I’m sick of this politically correct yet morally fucked world. A world where we’re afraid others will be offended by our words, but not that others will be affected by our actions. A world where everybody says they want a solution, but nobody’s willing to admit they’re the problem. The choices we make travel further than we think, but we choose to ignore the impact we have. There was a time I thought we could change. But as I get older I find myself asking, even if we could change, do we want to?

Perhaps this is simply who we are. From the beginning, we’ve been unable to coexist with other life on this planet. And no matter how far we’ve evolved, it’s a theme that lives on. If the story of our planet were a film, up to this point humans would be the villain. And like any great villain, we’ve always refused to see ourselves as the bad guy.

Each generation comes into this world thinking they can make things right, only to be remembered years later for what was wrong. Today we may have more information than any other generation. But what good are answers if we never begin to ask the right questions.

None of us chose to be born into this world. None of us chose who we would be. But all of us have the choice to change what we become.

-Written by Spencer Cathcart

Tucson Arizona Mailbox Art feat. Flora & Fauna Unique to Sonoran Desert

A composite of a variety of mailbox art in Tucson, Arizona.

wired saguaro cactus bird sculpture mailbox

gecko stones encased in metal box

The bulk of these photographs are singling out the artsy and crafty mailboxes that Tucson, Arizona residents demonstrate. Others are capturing lovely landscaping or funky yards along with nature pics.

black and white cow mailbox

For the most part these are a sample of the creative, humorous and quite unique mailboxes that I’ve encountered here in this funky town of Tucson, Arizona. Some of the symbols and sculptures are descriptive of the kinds of flora and fauna found here in the Sonoran desert, including the cartoon character looking birds with a ‘graduation tassel’ hanging from their head, the

common backyard birds of Tucson – Sonoran desert Arizona – the Gambel’s Quail (Callipepla gambelii)

To original 72 photos, I added 178 more, and then another 44!!! As I bicycle around, commuting to this or that event or errand, as I encounter them, I add to the mix. This could go on endlessly!

brick layer mailbox

I apologize for the fact that rather than using my camera, I’m using an android cell phone that is not exactly stellar quality, especially when dealing with a very very strong sunlight. Many of the photos are sort of washed out, and I’m not going out at dawn and dusk, unless I happen to be out at that time to capture the best lighting.

artist craftsmanship mailbox

I will naturally periodically add more mailboxes as I encounter any spectacular ones over the next months as I’m commuting by bicycle and come upon an extraordinarily designed mailbox or spectacular landscaping, but I don’t have endless hours to devote to this project, as I have too many other things I’ve got to tackle.

dragon mailbox

wagon wheel saguaro cactus mailbox

gecko shooting star mailbox

chili pepper mailbox attached to lamppost

 

 

 

 

 

 

It has been fun, since this town is mostly full of one-story homes with the good old fashioned mailbox, that neighbors seem to escalate into an art form! I apologize but I will not be sitting here with photoshop to enhance the quality, so you the viewer will just have to live with the bleached out nature of many of these. Wow, so much fun to see different peoples’ craftsmanship and care going into making something unique for everyone else to see.

barbed wire nest mailbox

saguaro cactus stand mailbox

blue mailbox metal southwestern desert themes

fire hose mailbox

copper flute player mailbox

Another image often used is that of the Saguaro cactus, also unique to the Sonoran desert.

Saguaro cactus unique to the Sonoran desert of the southwest

Sonoran Desert Region and subdivisions featured by the website of the local fantastic Sonoran Desert Museum

Again this coming weekend, as in last weekend, there’s a two day Tucson artist open studio event. May 14th & 15th and 21st & 22nd.

inspirational_tucson_artist_diane_fairfield at the

I was powerfully moved by the artwork of a local Tucson artist, Diane Fairfield http://www.dianefairfieldart.com with whom I spoke briefly this last weekend during the two weekend long Tucson Arts Open Studios will be taking place again this coming weekend; Saturday and Sunday, from 11am to 5pm. It was in the Steinfeld Warehouse 101 W. Sixth St.

Bill Baker’s photography of the desert.

 

 

 

 

I was stimulated as well by the photographs and conversation with a local photographer, Bill Baker http://bbakerphoto.com. These encounters are why my heart pulled me to stay in Tucson this last weekend to dis cover from without and within.

And though I’ve found a number of volunteering opportunities in this town – using my French language skills for African refugees and love of animals to lend a hand at a wildlife sanctuary on the outskirts of town – I still have no income what so ever. d’oh!

Carol Keiter selfie sun squint

Cheers!

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz ~ As an avid blogger who is presently picking up where I left off with my eBook to complete it and and beginning again to compose music, I ask you rather unambiguously and unabashedly to please donate, if you are able. !-))

Break Free from Fossil Fuels | 2 week global Wave of Escalated Action > Keep Coal, Oil + Gas In The Ground | Sat. May 14th

Actions are happening all over the world

On Saturday May 14th, all over the world, a coordinated action to break free from fossil fuels will take place. These actions will take place at strategic locations where people can come together. The southwest central hub is Los Angeles, California. People will meet at the City Hall at 1pm, 200 N. Spring St.

I wish to join from my current location in Tucson, Arizona, however I don’t have a vehicle or disposable income. It’s a 7.5 hour drive along Interstate 10. I just hitched to San Francisco 10 days ago, and frankly, would prefer to join people in a ride. nomadbeatz@graffiti.net If anyone reads this, perhaps a few vehicles could be coordinated. https://la.breakfree2016.org/transport/

Californians and people of the southwestern states will convene in L.A., home to the nation’s largest urban oil field in the United States—ground zero of California’s climate fight. We will demand that our elected leaders put an end to the oil and gas production that threaten the state’s health, environment and future. If California wants to uphold its legacy as a global climate leader, then we must keep oil and gas in the ground as we work toward establishing a sustainable energy economy.

In my case, I wish to attend the Los Angeles action. If anyone is interested in joining, here’s the link to get involved. https://la.breakfree2016.org/#join

Carol

Intention Without a Plan, Evolves a Path of Action

I’m going to do something unprecedented, write with extreme brevity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Couldn’t resist a shot of the classic pink adobe.

Not one, but at least two resident iguanas.

 

 

 

 

Though this adobe isn’t my new home, these are some of my new apt flatmates.

 

 

 

 

There really couldn’t have been more of a circuitous way of arriving in this community. My head said simply, head south, plan B was to head to northern France to help with the refugees along the coastline facing Great Britain.

a hazardous bridge is far better than a wall🙂

I’ve since learned that French speaking skills will come in handy here because among a large number of refugees from all over the world coming to Tucson because of its low cost of living, there is a significant African population.

I’ve contacted several refugee resettlement groups here in Tucson, the IRC and the Lutheran Social Services of the Southwest-Refugee Focus program to volunteer in various capacities such as being assigned to a family to maintain continuity and build trust. I will also volunteer at the

The Tucson Wildlife center is a Sanctuary just east of the city, which also borders the Saguaro National Forest

Tucson Wildlife center. In the meantime looking for ways of employing my skills in a variety of different ways.

I’ve discovered that there’s a substantial number of writers, artists and musicians living in this town. I had to bypass an ultimate frisbee hat tournament (on a sort of stormy day) to attend the Spring Arts Open House festival Heart of Tucson Art. There I met with a number of artists in the intimacy of their own homes, checking out their art and chatting. Among my bicycle mode of transportation to go from here to there, I’ve amassed some photos. 

My path to arrive here may appear completely haphazard, as I had mentally crossed off all communities not lying on the coasts, and yet I’m finding many of the things that a city can offer, as well as complete wilderness in a matter of an hour bike ride; yes, pleasantly surprised.

Now I have a bicycle, not the one pictured here which I used to move from Plan B, in which less is indeed more.

Small back pack and messenger bag.

The desert is full of extremes.

gorgeous_bluegrey_april_storm_clouds

And within minutes, one can leave the outskirts of the mostly one and two storied homes to reach the wilderness. Biking and hiking are common extracurricular activities around this plain surrounded by mountains.

artful mail boxes

the quirky, Skipper riding his bicycle several times across the country who was passing through

Skipper bicycling across country and stopping in Tucson

whom I met where I was fixing my bicycle at BICAS

BICAS bicycle inter-community art and salvage

And where one’s bicycle can easily deliver them to wilderness.

Yet the culture is far from a desert…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you look closely, these people are not walking a dog, but their cat. The cat was actually boldly prancing toward a poodle. What? Fantastic!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And its humor.

Clearly Unclear Place > Trust Mentors’ Inspiring Words

Deepak Chopra I am here to serve, inspire and live my truth.

I have come to a place where I am indeed stuck, hence the title, clearly unclear. I had catapulted myself, with ease actually, out of Pennsylvania, with several hours of creating a profile and investigating a work-exchange site, specifically a WWOOF position. The host needed someone immediately, and then I miraculously found an automobile to transport across the country, that also was so urgent, that the owners tossed in an extra 100 dollars to entice someone to drive it. So I reduced what I’d take with me to two bags and was off. It was with ease that I also found my way back from the west coast destination for the automobile, back to my host in rural Arizona. I would make it work, the idea was to be isolated with electricity and internet access, to complete my eBook and start composing music again, while writing my blogs. It was a choice just beyond homelessness, and closest to an artist residency. And then I learned that I was the only worker there, that unlike other work-exchange operations, that this was not 5 hours a day, 5 days a week, but every day, and pretty soon I discovered that there was way more work to do than could be easily snipped off at a 5 hour point. Then personality differences ensued. After delicately communicating expectations against the reality and letting reproachful comments slide, one morning the tension fractured, and I was asked to leave immediately. I had just enough time to wash the alfalfa hay and dust out of my hair and pack. When I had the audacity to finally make a statement about the current situation and express my own opinion while being driven from the remote farm to the next town, the tires screeched to a halt and I scrambled to make sure that I could get my valuables, now three bags, out of the vehicle before it sped away.

Eckhart Tolle Life will give you the experience necessary

I felt more of a sense of relief, than panic. I had been maintaining a meditation practice and had scooped out a bit more time through my own demands to at least do a little bit of my own work in between sleeping and working on the ranch. The animals I loved, the people were angry and overworked. I still remained calm as I stood on this dusty road in the middle of nowhere hitchhiking. A woman of the church finally stopped, she brought me to a place where I was able to approach a man sitting with his iPhone and laptop, to ask if it would be possible for me to poach some of his internet waves in order to send a message to my cousin, who I was pretty sure lived in Phoenix.

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

It turned out that in the very small allotted time that I sat there with WiFi through this guy whom I had some nice conversation with, that my cousin had returned my email with his contact information. I figured I’d start hitching to Phoenix, and discovered that my cousin lives in Tucson, the other direction. I found rides to take me there also effortlessly.

Charles Eisenstein Trust you Intuition be guided by Love

I have been here a little over a week. I have not had a clue of where to go. I have never warmed up to Los Angeles. I like to discover a city through having the option to walk around narrow streets and bicycle. I like to be in a place where I don’t HAVE to have a car, but can easily find the local ultimate frisbee pickup games, tennis courts, having a place to swim nearby is also lovely…and being among people who are artists and musicians with full hearts and open minds.

Wayne Dyer How you react is your karma

Suddenly it occurred to me that Tucson is this progressive place, particularly since it has a university, that is like an oasis in the desert of massive business chain entities that line several of the wide 4 lane highway streets that cut through the city. You know, the massive chains that are everywhere in the United States, as soon as you get out of the ‘old town’ or central quaint neighborhoods, you are confronted with these massive familiar businesses that are like flavors of ice cream, their brand names are so familiar to everyone.

Carlos Castaneda Your Perception Changes

So I decided, yes, I’ll look for work here, and housing, and then I had an experience one day that said, no, this is not what I want. And then I had another day that gently encouraged me to go with this new plan – do the duty, pay the price – and then the following day I was again feeling discouragement. As I communicated in a letter yesterday, perhaps I shouldn’t have come across and listened to, most of my adult life, the words and messages of Carl Jung, Carlos Castaneda, Joseph Campbell, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, Eckhart Tolle, Deepak Chopra, Charles Eisenstein, Wayne Dyer…

i.e. Tolle “Awakening to your Life’s Purpose”, Campbell “Follow your Bliss”, Jung “synchronicity” “Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”, Chopra ‘I am the creator of my best life”, Castaneda ‘the teachings of the shaman Don Juan”, Charles Eisenstein “We are all here to contribute our gifts toward something greater than ourselves, and will never be content unless we are.”

Carlos Castaneda Does the path have a Heart

And in my confusion, I’m delighted to have opened up this to read today.

http://charleseisenstein.net/books/the-more-beautiful-world-our-hearts-know-is-possible/nondoing/

“If we are stuck and do not choose to visit the empty place, eventually we will end up there anyway. You may be familiar with this process on a personal level. The old world falls apart, but the new has not emerged. Everything that once seemed permanent and real is revealed as a kind of hallucination. You don’t know what to think, what to do; you don’t know what anything means anymore. The life trajectory you had plotted out seems absurd, and you can’t imagine another one. Everything is uncertain. Your time frame shrinks from years to this month, this week, today, maybe even to the present moment. Without the mirages of order that once seemed to protect you and filter reality, you feel naked and vulnerable, but also a kind of freedom. Possibilities that didn’t even exist in the old story lie before you, even if you have no idea how to get there. The challenge in our culture is to allow yourself to be in that space, to trust that the next story will emerge when the time in between has ended, and that you will recognize it. Our culture wants us to move on, to do. The old story we leave behind, which is usually part of the consensus Story of the People, releases us with great reluctance. So please, if you are in the sacred space between stories, allow yourself to be there. It is frightening to lose the old structures of security, but you will find that even as you might lose things that were unthinkable to lose, you will be okay. There is a kind of grace that protects us in the space between stories. It is not that you won’t lose your marriage, your money, your job, or your health. In fact, it is very likely that you will lose one of these things. It is that you will discover that even having lost that, you are still okay. You will find yourself in closer contact to something much more precious, something that fires cannot burn and thieves cannot steal, something that no one can take and cannot be lost. We might lose sight of it sometimes, but it is always there waiting for us. This is the resting place we return to when the old story falls apart. Clear of its fog, we can now receive a true vision of the next world, the next story, the next phase of life. From the marriage of this vision and this emptiness, a great power is born.”

Alas, as I take in information with my brain and heart, and also stop and allow new messages to come in, I must trust that I’ll find my way.

Charles Eisenstein message to his Self of the Past The organic intelligence will become visible, the answer will find you.

Dalai Lama War and military establishments the greatest source of violence in the world.

I’m still looking for that artist residency and community….

Carol Keiter the blogger

Future Generations: Sorry Prince Ea | Stand for Trees | Severn Suzuki | Anjali Appadurai

I just came across these messages which echo in their empathy for the inhabitants of the earth affected by their environment and for the habitat loss of species; it’s about what we can and must do to actively engage in changes.

Dear Future Generations: Sorry Prince Ea

Prince Ea describes what a future generation may come across, when the Amazon Rain Forest becomes the Amazon desert…or when a tree is a thing of the past, yet stops himself to beckon the audience that it is not too late.

He urges to “look at the root, not at the branches of government…..we must globally warm our hearts….If we don’t all work together to save the environment, we will be equally extinct.”

Dear Future Generations: Sorry Prince Ea. If we do nothing, regardless of racism, sexism, inequality… we will be Equally Extinct

Prince Ea says he was inspired to write this piece after visiting Africa and witnessing the destruction of the rain forest, where animals are losing their habitat at enormous rates.

And with reference to sorry doesn’t cut it, because we still have a chance to act; he brings up Stand For Trees, what he has chosen as an action to offset carbon.

Every time you buy a Stand For Trees Certificate, you help local forest communities around the world keep a specific forest standing and prevent a tonne of CO2 from entering the earth’s atmosphere.

Stand for Trees certificate

Stand for Trees How it Works You Buy a Stand for Trees Certificate – offsetting a ‘tonne’ of CO2 – allowing forest to stand

This will naturally help communities living within these local forests to protect and honor their trees and want to maintain the forest as well as maintaining the corridor of land for all the species whose habitat is within these forests.

I came across the speeches of two young girls who had the courage to extend their voice to adults meeting in two separate climate summit events.

One features the Words of Wisdom of the 12 year old girl at the time of here speech in 1992, uploaded April, 2008 onto youtube.

Severn Suzuki in Rio De Janeiro Earth Summit 1992

Severn Suzuki was the ‘girl who silenced the world for 5 minutes‘.

I am only a child, and yet I know, that if all of the money that is spent on war, was instead spent on environmental policies, Severne Suzuki girl who silenced the world for 5 minutes. She claimed that her father informed her, “You are not what you say, you are what you do.” She was speaking at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro 1992 – United Nation’s Conference on Environment and Development (1992)

Severn said that her father informed her, “You are not what you say, you are what you do.” Investigating, I found that her father is certainly saying and doing things to inspire us. https://digesthis.wordpress.com/2016/03/08/sustainability-david-suzuki-creative-consciousness-same-name-but-different/

At that time, Severn Suzuki was speaking for (ECO) The Environmental Children’s Organization – which she and several 12 and 13 year old friends started to engage with the world to make a difference. She came 5,000 miles from British Columbia to Rio to tell adults how their actions were causing her to lose her future. “I am only a child, and yet I know, that if all of the money that is spent on war, was instead spent on environmental policies.”

Severn Suzuki speaking at Earth Summit Rio 1992 if all the money spend on war was spent on ending poverty and finding environmental solutions.

Severn Suzuki grew up in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. In her speech she said, “In my country we make so much waste, we buy and throw away, buy and throw away, and yet northern countries will not share with the needy. Even when we have more than enough, we are afraid to lose some of our wealth, afraid to share…

If you don’t know how to fix it, please stop breaking it!”

Here is the full text of Severn Suzuki’s speech at the Earth Summit Conference in Rio, 1992.

She is since married with two children, intent still in making a difference through her education and activism. Think Global Green, listing Facts and Solutions about the environment.

19 years later, another young articulate and bold young woman spoke to a different climate conference, this time the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa in 2011. As a representative of the College of the Atlantic representing the Youth Delegation, Anjali Appadurai urged the dignitaries attending the UN summit for climate justice, demanding them to “Get It Done”!

Anjali Appadurai, representing the Youth Delegation of the College of the Atlantic speaking to United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa 2011, covered by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz ~ As an avid blogger who is presently picking up where I left off with my eBook to complete it and and beginning again to compose music, I ask you rather unambiguously and unabashedly to please donate, if you are able. !-))

Carol Keiter the blogger with Tibetan prayer flags, Native American dream catchers and green plants

Unbounded Spirit | Opposite of Addiction is Connection | Johann Hari “Chasing the Scream”

This short video “Drugs Don’t Cause Addiction” is one of the most profoundly accurate looks into our modern societal malaise and misguided notions about what is of value today. As the unbounded spirit acknowledges, “This Brilliant Animated Video Will Change Your View on Drugs Forever”, and I add, and Your View of Our Modern Society.

Everything We Think we Know About Addiciton is Wrong

Obviously much thought went into it, as this video project is a collaboration with Johann Hari, the author of the book “Chasing the Scream”. It reveals that pointing the finger of blame to ‘drugs’ or ‘the war on drugs’ is actually completely missing the point.

“Chasing the Scream” by Joann Hari – brilliant reviews

As is typical, the fingers are pointing in the opposite direction of the real problem. What we need to realize is that the real blame is our collective societal values of materialism over connection with others. As the western world has become more and more focused on material wealth and financial gain, this has been accompanied with increasing social isolation. The problem is not a drug, nor an individual addiction, but a collective one which has been driven by consumerism.

We need to rebuild our society towards values in which the individual derives happiness through accomplishments from actions in which he or she is engaged in which makes him/her happy and feel joy from emersion in that activity, and in which collectively we are sharing activities and experiencing joy through camaraderie and sympathy; recognizing that we are all living this life together and that only when all beings have peace, comfort and security can we all share in that joy.

Paraphrasing the video…

Addiction is just one symptom of the crisis of disconnection that is happening all around us.

People have an innate need to connect. When we’re happy and healthy we will bond with the people around us. Yet when we’re traumatized, isolated or beaten down by life, we will bond with something that will give us some sense of relief; such as:

Endlessly checking a cell phones

addiction to cell phones

 

addiction to pornography

addiction to video games

 

addiction to gambling

 

addiction to cocaine – drugs in general

because…as the video elucidates, we will bond with something, because THIS is our human nature.

 

 

Since the 1950’s the average number of close friends an American has, has been steadily declining, whereas the amount of floorspace in their homes has been increasing. Choosing floorspace over close friends, stuff over connection.

The path out of unhealthy bonds, is to form healthy bonds; to be connected to people you want to be present with.

It’s not the chemicals, it’s your cage.

We need not talk about individual recovery from addiction, but must talk about social recovery.

We need to change the unnatural way that we live.

The opposite of addiction is not sobriety, the opposite of addiction is connection.

I recall a ‘waking dream I had decades ago. It was not while I was sleeping, but during the day. I was witnessing what has since been created, virtual reality, before it existed. In the dream I was climbing a mountain. I could feel the breeze. The ‘camera’ pulled out so that I was then seeing myself from above, then further away looking down at the earth. Then suddenly I was climbing out of a box, an isolation tank, in my living room. I then was disconnecting these wires from my scull. When I awoke from this engaging dream during the day while I was living in Washington D.C., I recall feeling very disturbed emotionally from the thought of having cheated myself by not ‘actually’ having the real experience of traveling to a mountain to summit, but was only alone in a box – the shell of the real experience. A few years later I was startled to watch a movie while I was traveling and visiting Europe called “Strange Days” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Days_(film) because it was recapturing the essence of the mechanics of how this ‘virtual reality’ of my vision and virtual experience occurred.

1995 film Strange Days

I have since continued to feel this conviction (even though I’m sitting here ‘working’ and writing, creating and communicating in isolation on my MacBook Pro – and loving and needing this machine – so I think🙂 That if we don’t maintain a balance, our technologies will continue to isolate us from ourselves and one another. I had hypothesized that primitive people perhaps had not lost our special connection to the cosmos. A friend then pointed out to investigate my theory by looking at the aborigines of Australia. They once consistently demonstrated telepathy and ultra human powers of consciousness. As modern man relies more and more on our gadgets to do things for us, our human powers of mind and heart and connection to one another and the universal intelligence will atrophy. I believe human beings do have capabilities of telepathy and of connection with the divine through allowing ourselves to quite our minds and engage our spirits and heart – our sixth sense or intuition or gut instincts – whatever you want to call it. Yet, if our thoughts are constantly engaged and busy worrying about the past and the future and what we don’t have and judging one another and watching sitcoms and shit, we don’t have the time or space to tap into what is available to us as spiritual beings on the material physical plane. yep, I said it. I always thought it. And I keep finding other human beings who also reiterate and reverberate the same message….

This video was put together with http://www.patreon.com

patreon dot com description / kurzgesagt

http://addiction.mobydigg.de and the unbounded spirit.

 

 

 

Carol the blogger in her Moose-themed residence at her first WWOOF experience in Arizona

 

Here’s a pic of me, the blogger in my ‘moose lake lodge’ residence in the Sonoran desert where I’m participating in my first WWOOF experience on the Veteran’s Ranch, a means of avoiding homelessness while at the same time being very interested in learning about farming techniques from the pros – the people who run the farms and ranches – and I absolutely love and adore animals of every type.

 

When I’m not working with the animals or on my own projects, I’m taking pictures of sunsets.

Solitude and Serenity Sonoran Sunset Feb. 20th 2016

And I’ve started to take videos of the animals, with the incentive to capture the sounds, to then weave into some new music (sounds on the ranch🙂

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz ~ As an avid blogger who is presently picking up where I left off with my eBook to complete it and and beginning again to compose music, I ask you rather unambiguously and unabashedly to please donate, if you are able. !-))

In addition to the fact that donations are always welcome and appreciated, I just discovered to day February 20th, 2016 patreon, which I am very happy to join and am about to create an artist profile. It is a very similar concept to something I conjectured a month or so ago: wishing there was an artist residency somewhere where the artists can collaborate if they choose, yet which is based on earning money for what they create. They are paid, as they commit to producing work. Well, patron is not a residency, yet it does offer capital, and I’m pretty stoked to have discovered it. Certainly it will act as a motivator for all artists, lighting a fire to keep them producing new work!!! I’ll sign on to patreon as a blogger/photographer/illustrator/author creating a profile tomorrow, and will be de light ed to find some patrons encouraging me to keep on producing work!

Transformation | Presents of Presence | Asking the Right Questions

I suddenly have very limited time. Nothing like time constraints to force one into action! In fact, the underlying current of this blog is about constraints put on from the outside, which have actually been blessings because they have been lighting the flames to blaze my path. I’ve fortunately welcomed these, as I have wished to set into motion my path and cast a net of wider options. Aiming for excellence as opposed to perfection, I’m striving to accomplish projects as efficiently as possible and simply ‘get them out there’.

I’m presently living on a ranch on the dusty outskirts of Florence, Arizona in the Sonoran desert.

Entrance and front porch to my living quarters on Ranch near Florence, Arizona

A town I had never heard of and a place I hadn’t fathomed living in several weeks ago. A month ago I shoveled two and a half feet of snow

2.5 feet of snow in Pennsylvania

in Pennsylvania, the largest snowfall in a decade, despite 2015 being the warmest year globally, on record. Here are some pics of my 1st WWOOF experience on Veteran’s Ranch off the town of Florence, Arizona in the Sonoran desert.

Here are some pics of my 1st WWOOF experience on Veteran’s Ranch off the town of Florence, Arizona in the Sonoran desert.

Back in midsummer I was suddenly pushed to move out of my ‘childhood’ home, where I had been residing once again after moving back from Berlin, Germany. I anticipated having to leave this residence, eventually, yet had – from my perspective – an enormous task ahead of me. I needed to ‘go through’ a large closet packed with my possessions that had been stored there while I lived on the East and West coasts of the US and several European countries. The beginning of tackling this was through the serendipitously timed message of an online coworking coach, regarding approaching large tasks much more easily, by setting oneself very small goals: ‘mini habits’. This invoked me to begin stretching, meditating and eventually to begin ‘going through’ one, then another box, in un-intimidating doses. The task felt enormous, because rather than dealing with large pieces of furniture, it was with minute pieces of paper – boxes upon boxes of journals, sketches, letters – which I would eventually sift through and decide what to recycle and what to photograph and digitize, along with creating folders and a methodology of cataloguing so that I could easily retrieve this mass of media.

When I was forced to leave the home with a very short notice, my first response was not to panic and scramble looking for where to immediately go, but to pour my heart and mind into the intent of where I would ultimately love to go. I put out this notice https://carolkeiter.wordpress.com/2015/07/25/posting-a-jobhomecommunity-relocation-info-ad-for-myself/

The timing of it triggered me to go through my stuff, while awaiting an opening at a workaway position in Brooklyn, New York on a Ferry Boat – another deadline. I fortunately was offered a temporary residence which gave me the space to accomplish this task. A friend of my housing host repeatedly asked me “Aren’t you excited about moving to Brooklyn?”, to which I responded that I wasn’t in the least bit thinking about it, as I was focused in the present; doing the best job that I could in sorting through and digitizing a huge glutton of my past.

I made it through this material, while continuing to eat healthy foods, stretching daily and practicing heart-rhthym meditations. Then another synchronisitic event occurred. Aware that the Paris Climate Talks were approaching, as someone who blogs consistently about corpocrisy, animal rights, environmental, political and economic topics, I now happened upon the concept from the textbook of the ‘iamheart School of Heart Rhythm meditations‘ about directing a question during the meditation exercise. Some of the letters which kept surfacing while sifting through my stuff, connected with a discovery that emerged during and within hours of this meditation. A week later I was on a flight on my way to Paris within days of the beginning of the COP21. I joined a crew of 600 others to participate in the learning and transformative activist and journalism movement of Place to B, a gathering of people involved in actively engaging and transforming our relationship to the world ecologically.

Within the first minute of getting into my seat of the WOW airlines flight from Baltimore Washington to Reykjavik Airport, connecting to a flight to Paris; Kadi and I introduced ourselves and discovered that we were each headed to the same destination, Paris, for the COP21. We high-fived! I was heading to PlacetoB whereas she had a pass to enter the floor of dignitaries of the COP.

Carol Keiter from the USA and Kadi Kenk from Estonia sitting next to one another on the WOW airlines flight from Baltimore Washington to Reykjavik Airport, connecting to a flight to Paris; Each going to the Paris COP21 Climate Talks

She mentioned an Estonian designer who recognized the enormity of waste in the design industry of unused fabric, who started a ‘trash to trend’ movement. The ‘Reet Aus’ label means ‘up made’.

‘Trash to Trend’ Estonian 100% Upcycled Clothing Design Line

It implies all of the leftover fabric that is used instead of being thrown away. The designer works not with recycled, but 100% upcycled clothing line. As we talked, Kadi mentioned that she’s a lawyer in tax law. She had started to volunteer at letsdoitworld a World Cleanup Day designated for 2018. Once she finished her position and realized she had no limitations, she began to open up to see things that were always there, but that she hadn’t noticed before: not just opportunities, but a completely different way of living one’s life.

She mentioned that things open up for people who are willing to open themselves to seeing things in a new way.

By going with the flow and trusting in one’s intuition, this allows one to be able to now see things, even though they were always there, but which one wasn’t able to see.

Let’s do It World Cleanup Day 2018

One of the first distinctions I realized upon sitting in my first day seminar at the PlacetoB, was a palatable spiritual essence within the presentations. Here were people who gathered because of their longing to make positive changes in the world. Changemakers, innovators, creatives and media professionals here in Paris to explore solutions to sustainable living, with the intent to share stories and seed their own media in ways to help create change. People with ideals they believe in, and the incentive and intent act on their creative instincts in whatever ways they conceptualized. I would say that one common denominator is that all think outside of the box; going with their hearts to manifest what they believe in. It was no accident that my heart meditations brought me there. On my first day there attending a seminar at PlacetoB, the host of the Transformational Media Summit, Jeremy Wickremer’s message reverberated with me. He spoke of the importance of asking the right questions. More important than driving towards answers, is asking questions, as this already is less limiting, and opening oneself up to a field of creativity. Wickremer prompted zealously emphasizing that “The quality of our questions affects the quality of our lives. It affects where we focus our efforts and what we achieve.”

I am daily asking questions within my meditations of how best I can serve, doing what I love to do and what I feel passionately about. Trusting in this, with the steady stream of various messages that have helped to guide and nudge me into a secure space, despite having subsequently moved to this workaway Ferry boat gig in Brooklyn, New York days following my return from Paris and told that it wasn’t going to work. And then moving back to the place which was my temporary refuge while I sifted through my stuff, and was told that this as well was not going to work, I felt that each was a gift, to push me to move on towards what will be the better way for me to manifest my dreams and use my skills best.

Once again rather than panicking about having shelter, my first instinct was to follow through with a blog I was putting together, that suddenly erupted into yet another synchronistic series of connections; the fact that in my research I happened upon the same organization that I later discovered was what had also been sent to me by one of my PlacetoB comrades. I delved first into contacting an organization with an introduction to myself and defining what I would love to do with them, using a set of skills from illustration to writing, conceptualizing to marketing their service abroad with my language skills. I then prompted myself to put out another pair of blogs as a christening of the job application. My approaching deadline of potential homelessness now serendipitously called me to consider paring down to what I could carry on my back, as in Paris, just two backpacks. Now my Facebook groups emerged with concepts of hitchhiking South (having just shoveled two and a half feet of snow in PA days earlier). Now I was looking at posts in the hitchhiking group about ways to travel and sleep for free, several of which I had already been acquainted with. In this process of investigation into now the possibility of simply beginning to travel South, with the idea of contacting and interviewing successful agroforestry farmers in Central and South America, I learned of a Frenchman born in 1937 who basically hitchhiked and traveled more extensively than anyone, André Antoine Brugiroux, who between 1955 and 2005, visited every country and territory in the world.

Having not heard back from the Center for Ecoliteracy organization in Berkeley, California where I created my own position which I presented to them, and having little savings and an ever increasing credit card debt, I now was inspired to begin hitching, however then the Zika virus scare erupted into the news. I then aimed towards the idea of searching for workaways in Europe, where ultimately I would love to reside, to ever expand my language skills. From Sicily to France, the idea of learning ecological practices from the pros, those with their own farms to then communicate in writing, this was now my pursuit. I went as far as investigating universities in France to combine studying French as a foreign language with ecological studies, yet the timing was not quite right, the semester was just starting and I had yet to acquire a student VISA. A sister of mine then reminded me of the WWOOFing concept which I new of vaguely. Within days of joining and creating yet another online profile about what I can offer and lots of investigation, I received an answer. Within minutes I remembered autodriveaway as possibility of transporting myself as I had use previously when driving back to the East coast from California with the car packed with my own stuff. This time there were only two autos on their entire list – in February – that needed to be transported. I opted for the one from the East to the West coast. The person who had been lined up to transport this car backed out at the last minute and now it was urgent. I had just enough money with more cc debt to manage the deposit, and now my plan was coalescing. I coordinated what I’d need to be a Ranch hand (hiking boots, sturdy clothes to get mucked up and gloves, sunscreen) and hitched to the location to pick up the car. My first ride within minutes of standing by the road in central PA with a sign to the next highway, was a guy who was listening while he drove to ‘The Secret‘ on his laptop in his van, and decided that there was ‘a reason for picking me up’. He drove me most of the way, having no specific jobs of urgency that morning. As he pulled into a gas station for us to find out where we were in relation to Washington D.C., he had just gotten a text about a job that sprung up, and I saw a well dressed man in his hat walking to his car. Something told me to launch out, leaving my luggage to approach this man and ask if he was driving towards D.C. He was my ride to one of the outer metro stops that would bring me from the northern tip of the Washington District of Columbia metropolitan subway transit system to where I needed to go on the southern end in Alexandria, Virginia to pick up the car. The woman working for the transit system was my third hitch, she gave me a pass to show upon arrival at my station stop.

I drove a Honda Civic (same automobile that I was driving of my mother) across the country. Leaving behind as a gift, the magnets a friend handcrafted in Taos, New Mexico – signifying to me the spiritual essence of life’s path.

Magical Magnets handcrafted by Betsy Pierce

and was off

the last sunset shot in Pennsylvania

And having taken a photo of the last sunset I saw in central Pennsylvania, I met my new host after climbing into her truck to take a lovely sunset photo here in my new environment, the Arizona desert.

Arizona sunset at the pickup point off Interstate 10.

Besides the changing landscapes that evolved from the thick moist air of the Washington D.C. area to then the hills of Tennessee and then the obvious encroaching desert of Oklahoma, were the accompanying radio stations which were now broadcasting more Christian radio shows and Christian rock, the further south and west I drove. By the time I was in the Pan Handle of Texas, there was a preacher-like radio caster who denounced Planned Parenthood as something to be handcuffed, and that the applauded birth-rate drop while it was still in existence, was to him, nothing to boast about. I guess he doesn’t notice the global problems due to overpopulation…

I managed to pull a 17 hour day drive so that I could arrive in Albuquerque NM the following day at a reasonable hour to meet up with my friend since the days when I lived in Taos. The timing was perfect, non-calculated yet having driven with the incentive to have some spare time.

Glad I had the down sleeping bag that my former captain of my Berlin Ultimate Frisbee team “Yeehaw” gifted to me, as the windshield upon waking was sketched with crystals of ice.

I stopped at the Ranch to drop off my two backpacks and to become introduced to what I was about to commit to. I wasn’t yet sure how I’d return to Arizona from Los Angeles once I delivered the car. However after investigating Greyhound, then put some ads in the LA craigslist rideshare, and even scouted out local public and private Los Angeles airports with the idea of hitching a plan, I sent out a message to a friend who lives there. We had lived in San Francisco at the same time, then met up randomly at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah and then became housemates in Santa Fe, New Mexico and he tipped me to get a job working at the Santa Fe Ski Basin. We then were for a period both living in Berlin, Germany at the same time and now each back in the States. It turned out that though numerous people answered my craigslist ad looking for a ride, my friend Paul was just returning from a day’s ski trip and was leaving in another day and a half to drive to Tucson, Arizona to attend the Gem and Jam music festival which he had purchased tickets for in advance. It just so happened that he’d be driving on Interstate 10, which is the route I took to CA from AZ, and where I could be picked up by the Rancher. Yep, another rather scintillating example of synchronistic timing! Here are pics of the road trip

flickr pics of my East to West autodriveaway trip transporting a Honda Civic (I love these cars) and of some scenes in Los Angeles

and also of some interesting Los Angeles scenes.

Now I’m working rather long hours and doing physically harder work than I’ve ever done in my life, yet with absolute love for the animals I’m helping to take care of for a rancher who is a tremendously hard worker. She is teaching me efficiency, as she juggles multiple tasks; a job, milking goats with a machine, raising chickens, turkeys, two pot-bellied pigs and making lotions and soap with the goat milk base. She is also part of a volunteer Search & Rescue team who must ride horses for their operation; the most efficacious way to search for a lost person in the desert is not with an automobile, but by horse. Her husband tends to the horses and cattle. They have 6 dogs, three of which are ‘working dogs’ yet completely lovable pets, and all of which are at least 80 pounds a piece. WWOOFing is excellent for the hosts, who as farmers and ranchers typically have endless chores and work to maintain their operations, and great for people like myself who can step into a completely new environment, and learn continuously about aspects of farming etc. that are new; offering one’s physical help in exchange for room and board. I specified in my search that I needed internet access. Voila! In this solitude, living in the middle of nowhere in the sonoran desert with no vehicle (except for my thumb), I opted to bring a folder of all of my Paris paraphernalia and my digital camera and laptop; to continue to spread all that I learned during the two weeks in Paris and to complete my book and start composing more music. It is a purposeful isolation, and really quite unique. As someone who has still not marketed myself nor find an artist residency, nor a publisher willing to gamble on an unpublished writer, nor any grants or funds from a foundation to assist, this seemed to be the best option – specifically since the whole theme of the Paris COP21 and PlacetoB is about transforming all of our habits towards ecologically healthy ones for humans and all inhabitants of the planet, for a better world.

For anyone who has read this far, I can say that this is giving me a taste of what it is like to be a prisoner. I am the only worker here, so all of the load is falling on me, and it is sort of endless and presently a bit overwhelming. I have no days off, must be up at 6am every day, and rarely are the hours contained to the typical WWOOF schedule of 5 hours/day, totaling 30 hours a week. I have felt at times like what it must be like to be an indentured servant; for example a Pakistani immigrant worker in Saudi Arabia, working for ‘masters’ who may not be very gracious or kind. I feel like I am consistently fighting to keep the hours per day to a reasonable workload so that I can have time to work on my own projects, and it has been a continued struggle. Now I am wondering what it is that I can do, where to go, as I am earning no money whatsoever. It sounded like a reasonable way to accomplish things and this place seemed ideal in my minds eye; to put myself into solitude where I would just work on my projects. Up front it was stated that no smoking, drinking or drugs would be tolerated. I typically have a glass of red wine with my dinner, a smoke once in a while and yet certainly I am demonstrating that I’m not addicted to any of these because I can carry on fine without. Yet I feel like I hardly have any time. I am now questioning why it is that I somehow can not manage to find work that employs my skills; illustrating, writing, conversational German, French and Spanish and administrative skills and plenty of creative and conceptual ideas. I’m also a very social person who presently is sort of marooned in an area so rural with no vehicle or bicycle, so that I can’t go out at all. In fact, I feel that I am not being treated with much dignity or respect, and wondering why I have come to this place? What was it in the stars that compelled me to idealize this one, and launch myself here? Perhaps the lesson is that I have not worked on completing my book or composing any new music. I am not sure what the ‘universe’ is telling me? Perhaps it is that the joke is on me for not having had the courage or belief in myself to really dive into crafting my own skills and putting this out there. Therefore, I am definitely on a transition, and I’m not sure to where? Hmmm, within an hour of writing this paragraph and perusing Facebook while eating my dinner, I came across this post which my sister shared. It seems to hold the key!

Within an Hour of adding this previous paragraph, I discovered this post which my sister had shared on her Facebook Wall | Are you Blocking your own Success

In retrospect, though the message is essentially solid, once I checked out this woman’s video I got a little annoyed with the typical selling strategy: buy now or you’ll lose out, and with this offer, you’ll get such and such for free, only while it lasts!!!! I just don’t go for these gimmicks and sales techniques, they turn me off. Funny, when I first tuned in to get my free counseling video, suddenly my computer decided to ‘update my safari browser’ and then the whole ‘streaming’ was glitchy using another browser. I do appreciate the information; about the ways that a person can be self-sabotaging through subconscious thoughts and ‘limiting beliefs’ that were imprinted into the unconscious during childhood when a person is operating mostly on ‘Theta Brainwaves’. And her points about repetition of empowering and positive thoughts envisioned and surrounding oneself with positive and supportive people who take action and make creative changes in their lives….yet I think that one can tap into this through meditation, opening up a channel to the ‘intelligence of the universe’ or whatever you wish to call IT.

Here I am,

carol_keiter_blogger_wwoof_res_feb20

the blogger in my ‘moose lake lodge’ in the Sonoran desert where I’m participating in my first WWOOF experience on the Veteran’s Ranch, a means of avoiding homelessness while at the same time being very interested in learning about farming techniques from the pros – the people who run the farms and ranches – and I absolutely love and adore animals of every type.

 

When I’m not working with the animals or on my own projects, I’m taking pictures of the sunsets, which have been gorgeous lately.

the sunset from all angles on this Sonoran desert feb 19th evening

As an avid blogger who is presently picking up where I left off with my eBook to complete it and and beginning again to compose music, I ask you rather unambiguously to please donate, if you are able. !-))

Earth to Paris | Place to B | Heart Dimension

Earth to Paris Paris to Earth

Earth to Paris rallied people to urge world leaders to make bold committments to combat climate change World Leaders need to Hear from the World

As I excitedly told the custom’s agent returning from Paris with the words gushing out of me describing my adventure and the phenomenal gathering of people I had just been a part of, he responded smilingly, “Sounds like it was the place to be”. “Bah Oui Hey, THAT IS the NAME of it, Place to B!” And that is how the synchronicities were flying the entire time, in fact even before I knew that I’d be going there to participate.

And Indeed it was the Place to B.

Place to B and the Place to Brief homepage

It was the Place to Brief among climate activists, bloggers, journalists, entrepreneurs, artists and people representing their communities that have already been in the last years affected by global warming. This alternative media session of organized talks and workshops took place mostly under one roof, where many of 600 people from 40 countries who the attended it and participated slept under one roof, headquartered at the St. Christopher’s Inns, conveniently located at a triangular point within a few hundred meters of both the Gare de l’Est and the Gare du Nord, in central Paris. The event of information sharing was geared towards rewriting the story and presenting new ways to approach Climate Change from the media standpoint and learning about a plethora of techniques already successfully in practice to make a difference with better knowledge, understanding, information about degenerative agriculture as opposed to regenerative and sharing success stories of all sorts of entrepreneurs who are out in the world using their ingenuity and actions to dramatically affect peoples’ lives.

This epicenter gathering of people sharing information about ways to talk about climate change and sustainable alternatives and tremendously successful projects took place simultaneously during the two week sessions of heads of state meeting together just a bit northeast of Paris at the COP21, the Conference of Parties ‘Sustainable Innovation Forum 2015’.

Place to B set up by Anne-Sophie Novel and a team of 165 people to create this world-class event.

The Place to B and particularly the Place to Brief, was conceived of by a French journalist and writer

The Place to B: Place to Brief was conceived of and founded by the journalist and author Anne-Sophie Novel and the director of production Nicolas Bienvenue. They were surrounded by a team of people who coordinated the continuous flurry of learning events and entertainment, with a tremendous group of visiting presenters, entrepreneurs and activists who each delivered their scintillating information and testimonies of successes and inspirational savvy from all corners of the world. Anne-Sophie thought of the idea in response to the journalists being blocked out of the Copenhagen Climate Summit in 2009. She marched forward with her terrific idea of creating a focal point where activists and news media could gather, and more and more people joined in with their support and energy towards the idea. It certainly did involve a huge commitment and coordination from so many people, with a packed two week schedule of events.

I, as well as many people will be seeding this information. I’ve learned so much that I was unaware of, such as the distinction between degenerative and regenerative agriculture. We were all introduced to so many new perspectives and ways of looking at everything; new information about methods of agriculture, devices that can be made quite easily at a very low cost that can dramatically aid peoples’ lives, save lives and improve their quality of life. We were also endowed with a lot of historical insights peeling away what we don’t learn through the media, such as why the economy is the way it is, why the degradation of the environment has spun out of control the way it has with the evolution of the Western profit-driven capitalist world. Speakers like Amy Goodman, Vandana Shiva and Naomi Klein shared their powerful insights.

At the same time, there was an uncanny – as if carefully planned – theme of information that talked of re-creating the story, probing for different ways of framing the situation, different ways of presenting ‘climate change’ to the public. The event was infused with spirituality, in the sense of feeling a connectedness, a buzz of excitement coming from a group of people brimming with inspiration and aspirations. There was a palpable empathy there among the participants, who had come from all over the world, each inspired to learn, gather information and express their ideas. One felt a connection with others, with oneself and with the cause of tipping the direction that humanity has taken to a new trajectory. There were meditation classes, yoga sessions, dance, music, artist workshops, loads of media discussions, lectures and continual briefings about what was being discussed at the COP and more importantly, what we could all collaboratively and collectively learn from one another. Certainly, the task of all who were there, is to keep spreading this information of hope and the knowledge that we can each do something to make small changes that will aggregate to make vast ones.

Every Small Gesture Has Significance

Many little voices make a tremendous noise, and many little gestures, create big changes.

When you feel that you are here in service, and bow to that, opportunities will arise to allow you to act on that intention.

It was in a meditative state that I posed these questions, what may be the best thing for me to do to connect, to use my skills…and after a bunch of synchronicities fluttered towards me, I took a leap of faith to Paris within a week of learning about the Place to B through having reconnected with a former colleague of years back who happened to be one of the organizers.

One of the workshops I attended was the Transformational Media Summit : Storytelling and Media for a Better World. The New Story summit was hosted by Jeremy Wickremer, co-founder of Transformational Media Initiative In his presentation, Jeremy Wickremer spoke of the fact that each of us are potentially change-agents, with the capacity to do actions that can have a big impact on the environment – our own lives, our communities and the larger environment. And that what is more potent than merely drawing up solutions from a logical methodology, is to start with the right questions, which prompts creativity in itself.

Specifically, he mentioned that your intention – within the guise of a question – will often be answered. He more recently wrote in an article “Our Invisible World” about the fact that many things which steer human behavior, emotions, health, psychological and spiritual well-being have to do with the energy that lies beneath the actions. And that the common illnesses which affect modern man and the crisis of violence that threat human cultures, have to do with a disconnect. This disconnect is within our own selves, our patterns and habits of how we live our lives. There is a disconnect within ourselves, among one another and that humans have with other creatures and nature; which is presently resulting in the greatest magnitude of habitat destruction, dissemination of species and global ecological balances and health.

The biggest disharmony of all is perhaps our relationship with the natural world.

Eisenstein, in his Sustainable Man video about The New Story, which I wrote about in my other blog, talks of stepping out of this paradigm of control and allowing oneself to be of service to this larger body of which we all are a part. And that as we direct our questions and intent to ask ‘what we can do to serve?’ that indeed, the answers and direction will arise in response to the intention.

Daniel Goleman Ecological Intelligence: The Hidden Impacts of What We Buy

Daniel Goleman is the psychologist, science journalist and author of “Emotional Intelligence”. He posits that non-cognitive skills can matter as much as a person’s I.Q. (Intelligence Quotient) for workplace success in “Working with Emotional Intelligence”. In 2007, Goleman wrote about “Social Intelligence” and in 2009, “Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy”

Besides the rational means of digesting information, there is the whole realm of the invisible. I’ll call it the domain of the heart. Herein lies the capacity of a person to intuit something and feel whether the information is in alignment with the words. A person can sense whether they feel good around a person, or uneasy. A person can have an impression beyond the rational, about whether the words of another person seem to convey the same as their gestures, or whether something is not quite in synch. One can sense whether something they read or see feels accurate and sound, or whether there is something amiss. Many animals can sense with a heightened capacity – with sense organs much more highly tuned to frequencies beyond those of human beings – to see, hear, detect movements and subtle alternations in the environment.

I mention the heart literally and figuratively as a metaphor. The heart is the central organ in the body – lets just talk about human beings – that is consistently circulating oxygen, nutrients and carrying away wastes throughout the body. The heart pumping station, is also by its nature generating an electromagnetic field which is larger than that produced by the brain. The heart also has a complex system of neurons, cells that are consistently transmitting information to the rest of the body. When the heart is in synch in the individual with feelings of joy and love, this invisible field expands. When an individual is more channeled into negative emotions of fear and anger, this field constricts.

The perception of the heart has everything to do with the health of all of the other organs of our body, of individual health in general, of the health of societies, permeating into healthy relationships with other organisms and with the health of the earth, which is an organism just as we are.

The heart is also metaphorically an organ of connection with others. Besides wonder, exuberance, joy and gratitude that a person can feel within him or herself, the words love, compassion and empathy typically imply a connection with another.

And as we begin to take tiny actions that follow the logic of the heart – which knows that each act is significant – the logic of the mind of the older world begins to be replaced. This power of repetition which can physically build muscles, is what occurs mentally, neurologically. Each time you think differently, you are rewiring your brain. This concept called Neuroplasticity has to do with the brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life. This rewiring allows the neurons (nerve cells) in the brain to compensate for injury and disease and to adjust their activities in response to new situations or to changes in their environment.

Listening to Intuition is the Wisdom of the Heart.

My introduction into the wisdom of the heart probably began through readings of Deepak Chopra. A physician and author, meditation guide and founder of the Chopra Center; who introduced this awareness that has been understood for Millenia in various Eastern spiritual traditions, of the effectiveness of meditation and this connection to the vast unknown dimension of energy. Chopra has teamed more recently with Oprah Winfrey to bring this domain of the spirit, of tapping into the hidden world of energy through stillness and meditation.

HRM Heart Rhythm Meditation synchronizes the breathe with the heart beat; coordinating the bodys respiratory, circulation and nervous systems into coherence

I then was introduced to the practice of ‘Heart Rhythm meditation’ which purports a harmonious and healing relationship within oneself and the universe beyond, through simply aligning the rhythm of one’s breathing to the rhythm of one’s heart beat. It is a practice introduced to the West by a Sufi Hazrat Inayat Khan who descended from Pashtuns, an ethnic group originally from Afghanistan and Pakistan. This meditation practice was brought to me by a certified AMA physician who understands the multidimensional healing that this practice provides – from reducing stress, to lowering blood pressure, creating a more harmonious heart rate and allowing oneself to access in this stillness, the domain of energy that stretches way beyond the physical heart and body.

HRM Heart Rhythm Meditation synchronizes the breathe with the heart beat; coordinating the bodys respiratory, circulation and nervous systems into coherence

So called ‘primitive people’, without having had the use of technological tools that more ‘advanced’ civilizations have had at their disposal and for their distraction, have had thousands of years of penetration into the invisible world that the modern Western world has only been starting to grasp is in the last 50 years. And with the spiritual and emotional well-being deficit that modern man has come to feel, this dis-ease of the human spirit, disconnect with oneself, growing obesity, growing psychological disorders and reliance on quick-fixes such as pharmaceuticals, and growing disharmony and feelings of isolation, have reached towards and cherished many ancient traditions that have evolved in the Eastern World to ease their dis-ease and treat their disharmony with something more than a quick fix of treating the symptoms instead of the disorder. They have reached towards practices of meditation, yoga, t’ai chi and walking into nature and silence, with a visceral understanding that these practices have short and long term benefits.

I will do my best to deliver in chewable-sized increments all that I’ve learned over a series of blogs.

The New Story | Sustainability | Capra & Luisi’s ‘Systemic View’ | Heart Dimension

Sustainability may not be widely discussed in the network news channels, as ‘action’ news stories often focus on human conflicts, disasters and economic problems of immediacy, rather than delving into long-term repercussions or solutions. Often one is not presented with situations from the standpoint of how you, the viewer, can potentially get involved and help to transform the situation.

In fact we have often received information, from the top-down, through a hierarchy of stations delivered by a few news networks, owned by a few individuals. However, even the new story, implies a new way of gleaning information; through social networks. This implies horizontal sharing of information which a person can actively investigate on their own, delving into sources of information that offer alternative views or by talking with one another, sharing ideas or even taking a walk in the woods to contemplate. So rather than being spoon-fed bits of information, it’s a process of actively investigating and sharing. In other words, thinking, for oneself.

You really Are What you Think.

Sustainable Man A New Story of the People

The “New Story of the People” is narrated breathfully by Charles Eisenstein; his story of ‘a more beautiful world’.

A New Story being in service to something larger than yourself

With respect to the ‘Sustainable Human’, Eisenstein talks about how in the last hundred years science has been focused on dissecting and reducing things to their elemental parts in the quest to understand our universe and the matter which makes up our world. Yet during the scientific process, the influence of the subjective viewer has come to be understood as influencing the object of study. In the past, this would have been discounted as something that can not be empirically proven. As the Western World expands beyond its scientific rationalism and objectification of the world in the ‘Industrial Age’ into a new view of the web of connections through the discoveries during the ‘Information Age’, our definitions are changing. And these spill over from the scientific view of the universe, into parallel pursuits in other arenas, such as recognizing that there is really something to the wisdom traditions of Eastern spirituality and mysticism. A perspective that has been compatible to various indigenous people all over the planet for millennium.

Eisenstein metions that “A new paradigm has begun to evolve along with this scientific view that emerged out of physics; a paradigm which sees the universe not as discreet parts with everything distinctly separate, but as interconnected.”

We are in a paradigm shift of perception, that moves from separateness to interconnectedness

When I was younger, my interest in science as well as consciousness, spirituality and mysticism, drew me to read the book “The Tao of Physics ” written by the physicist Fritjof Capra.

Fritjof Capra, an Austrian-born American physicist, described in this book what the new sciences were disclosing, a completely new way of looking at the universe, particularly looking at the world from the scientist’s perspective of probing the smallest building blocks.

The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra

Capra went on to write together with biochemist Pier Luigi Luisi “The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision”. The authors mention that the book primarily deals with the question, “What is Life?”. Their years of research reveal that from bacteria, to cells, to organs, to living organisms from plants and insects to birds and mammals involve networks.

At the core of this paradigm shift, is a perception shift from ‘separateness’ to ‘interconnectedness’.

Rather than looking at isolated events or bodies within its skin or shell, the most obvious characteristic of life are the relationships among networks with other bacteria, cells and creatures as well as relationships between different species, organs and colonies of beings. Life of all kinds, is not a distinct entity which can merely be quantitatively measured and classified into a particular domain, but the very essence of life is a qualitative interconnection between others of its kind and the whole ecological system of relationships between different species.

The common thread of all life is that it is the network. the network is a pattern consistent through all of life, the network is a series of relationships. the science that describes this new perspective is called the ‘Systemic View’. Nature sustains itself in the sense that every organism, from a cell, to an organ, to a body, to the social nature of a species, to the planet itself is an autopoietic system that regenerates itself. This works because it is in a set of relationships within a network system.

Vita e Natura – Life and Nature – video intro of Fritjof Capra and Pier Luigi Luisi’s book – The Systems View of Life A Unifying Vision

Here is an “essay excerpted from The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision”, presented on the (CEL) website Center for Ecoliteracy, which Capra co-founded.

Capra and Luisi argue “that many of the most important problems we face today – from financial instability to climate change and ecological degradation – reflect our collective inability to appreciate just how the world operates as a holistic, networked system in which every part depends on every other. This is something that can be approached and healed, from the systemic view. We need to live in a way that allows the planet itself to regenerate itself naturally. This leads us to consciousness of ecological sustainability and the intent to build and live in sustainable communities.

You are not distinct from Nature, You Are Nature

This New Story is all about sustainability: the capacity for human individuals and societies to live in a way that reduces the amount of the earth’s resources that they use, to a level that is compatible with the earth’s ability to regenerate itself and maintain a healthy balance.

This recognition of life as a network of relationships that are holistically healthy and regenerative only insofar as each of the interconnected parts are, as articulated in the Systemic View of life, is beginning to emerge in all different aspects of human relationships, as something to aspire to.

• in the individual – recognizing that we are as healthy and strong and happy only insofar as other members of the human community are also compatibly accessing education and opportunities as well as healthy environments
• in the cohesion of the human social community – in which cooperation rather than competition, diversity in participation and sharing between disciplines and groups is a healthy circulatory system
• in the realm of health – towards new ways of gardening and farming as well as the recognition of health sustaining nutrients inherent in foods and spices
• in emotional well-being – bringing the mind and the body into an interactive balance of movement and stillness; movement for healthy circulation, stillness to allow oneself to connect to that dimension which is beyond our immediate focus
• in spiritual continuity – recognizing that diversity is the spice of life; homogeneity breeds incestuous, narrow-mindedness and stagnation
• in economic behavior – towards openness & transparency, collaboration, horizontal sharing of ownership and the subsequent democratization of wealth
• in political systems – the more open and transparent the governing representatives, the more trust and mutual consensus for what is relevant and important in the fabric of existence; which includes humans, a healthy environment and relationship with all species

Diversity is healthy, whereas homogeneity breeds incestuous narrow-mindedness.

The New Story has evolved as our stories about ourselves, and the place of the human being in the world evolves.

You really Are what you Believe.

Ego vs Eco | Ecological Thinking for Business Transformation | The Nature of Business

The premise of the organization “Ecological Thinking for Business Transformation” is that our perception of reality and our worldview has been outdated. “We are witnessing a change in business paradigm from one suited for the industrial era to one suited for the interconnected era.”

In 1995, the physicist Fritjof Capra together with the philanthropist Peter Buckley and think tank director Zenobia Barlow, founded the Center for Ecoliteracy with the intent of sharing the awareness of the systemic view with students, through a series of educational programs that support ecological principles and systems thinking to curricula and projects in habitat restoration, school gardens and cooking classes, partnerships between schools and farms and curricular innovation among K12 schools. Among other things, the center helps to develop projects in habitat restoration, school gardens and cooking classes and partnerships between schools and farms, with the awareness that health begins with a healthy diet.

You really Are what you Eat.

Ecoliteracy dot org Education for Sustainable Living

Frijof Capra says that he has studied agroecology or regenerative agriculture.
Agroecology or agroforestry combines; forestry, agriculture and livestock. It is beyond sustainable, it is actually regenerative.

Jeremy Wickremer’s mentions in his article for The Ecologist Connecting the Dots: the Big Permaculture Picture ”Just like you need a holistic vision for a healthy mind and body, the same applies for a healthy planet. One way of living that seeks to do this is permaculture. To put it simply, permaculture is agricultural and social design principles centered around simulating or directly utilizing the patterns and features observed in natural ecosystems. It is a design system that mimics nature, where everything in the design supports everything else.”

Syntropyc Regenerative Agriculture, Ernst Götsch

In terms of sustainable and regenerative agriculture, Agroforestry is land use management system in which trees or shrubs are grown around or among crops or pastureland. It’s another example of replenishing the environment with nutrients and water, without needing chemicals or pesticides. This encourages growth in biodiversity and is healthier for farmers.

Besides the growth of food and the reflection of these sustainable practices on all of the other creatures with whom we share our planet, there are plenty of business solutions that are as well following this New Story, emulating what already clearly works in nature. One group is “Ecological Thinking for Business Transformation” also speak of the “out-dated worldview, a perception of reality inadequate for dealing with the volatile and globally interconnected business world.”

Having attended the “People and Planet First” conference in September of 2015 presented by the (IPS) Institute for Policies Studies in Baltimore, Maryland, the panelists also talked of a “New Story“. Among the speakers were Annie Leonard “The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard” and historian and political economist Gar Alperovitz who mentioned that though this new stream of activity towards cooperative business and horizontally-shared ownership is happening in discrete communities all over the United States, it isn’t being consciously driven, yet.

Eisenstein, in his Sustainable Man video about The New Story, talks of stepping out of this paradigm of control and allowing oneself to be of service to this larger body of which we all are a part. And that as we direct our questions and intent to ask what we can do to serve having a healthier body, mind, well-being, community and world, that indeed, the answers and direction will arise in response to the intention.

When you feel that you are here in service, and bow to that, opportunities will arise to allow you to act on that intention.

Besides the rational means of digesting information, there is the whole realm of the invisible. I’ll call it the domain of the heart. Herein lies the capacity of a person to intuit something and feel whether the information is in alignment with the words. A person can sense whether they feel good around a person, or uneasy. A person can have an impression beyond the rational, about whether the words of another person seem to convey the same as their gestures, or whether something is not quite in synch. One can sense whether something they read or see feels accurate and sound, or whether there is something amiss. Many animals can sense with a heightened capacity – with sense organs much more highly tuned to frequencies beyond those of human beings – to see, hear, detect movements and subtle alternations in the environment.

I mention the heart literally and figuratively as a metaphor. The heart is the central organ in the body – lets just talk about human beings – that is consistently circulating oxygen, nutrients and carrying away wastes throughout the body. The heart pumping station, is also by its nature generating an electromagnetic field which is larger than that produced by the brain. The heart also has a complex system of neurons, cells that are consistently transmitting information to the rest of the body. When the heart is in synch in the individual with feelings of joy and love, this invisible field expands. When an individual is more channeled into negative emotions of fear and anger, this field constricts.

Every Small Gesture Has Significance

The perception of the heart has everything to do with the health of all of the other organs of our body, of individual health in general, of the health of societies, permeating into healthy relationships with other organisms and with the health of the earth, which is an organism just as we are.

The heart is also metaphorically an organ of connection with others. Besides wonder, exuberance, joy and gratitude that a person can feel within him or herself, the words love, compassion and empathy typically imply a connection with another.

And as we begin to take tiny actions that follow the logic of the heart – which knows that each act is significant – the logic of the mind of the older world begins to be replaced. This power of repetition which can physically build muscles, is what occurs mentally, neurologically. Each time you think differently, you are rewiring your brain. This concept called Neuroplasticity has to do with the brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life. This rewiring allows the neurons (nerve cells) in the brain to compensate for injury and disease and to adjust their activities in response to new situations or to changes in their environment.

My introduction into the wisdom of the heart probably began through readings of Deepak Chopra. A physician and author, meditation guide and founder of the Chopra Center; who introduced this awareness that has been understood for Millenia in various Eastern spiritual traditions, of the effectiveness of meditation and this connection to the vast unknown dimension of energy. Chopra has teamed more recently with Oprah Winfrey to bring this domain of the spirit, of tapping into the hidden world of energy through stillness and meditation.

I then was introduced to the practice of ‘Heart Rhythm meditation’ which purports a harmonious and healing relationship within oneself and the universe beyond, through simply aligning the rhythm of one’s breathing to the rhythm of one’s heart beat. It is a practice introduced to the West by a Sufi Hazrat inayat Khan who descended from Pashtuns, an ethnic group originally from Afghanistan and Pakistan. This meditation practice was brought to me by a certified AMA physician who understands the multidimensional healing that this practice provides – from reducing stress, to lowering blood pressure, creating a more harmonious heart rate and allowing oneself to access in this stillness, the domain of energy that stretches way beyond the physical heart and body.

It was in this meditative state that I posed questions regarding what I can do of service, which sent me through a leap of faith to Paris during the COP21 Climate talks to the Place to B, an integration of lectures, workshops, panel discussions and barrage of information sharing, attended by 600 people from 40 countries. This sharing of information about climate change and sustainable alternatives took place simultaneously with the COP21 Climate Talks. The Place to B: Place to Brief was conceived of and founded by the journalist and author Anne-Sophie Novel and the director of production Nicolas Bienvenue. They were surrounded by a team of people who coordinated the continuous flurry of learning events and entertainment, with a tremendous group of visiting presenters, entrepreneurs and activists who each delivered their scintillating information and testimonies of successes and inspirational savvy from all corners of the world. 600 people representing 40 countries arrived in Paris to participate in what the Place to B/Place to Brief offered; alternative media, a collective with presentations, speakers and workshops, panel discussions and music and yoga and meditation workshops all happening at one central location throughout the two week duration of the Climate Talks.

One of the workshops I attended was the Transformational Media Summit : Storytelling and Media for a Better World. The New Story summit was hosted by Jeremy Wickremer, co-founder of Transformational Media Initiative In his presentation, Jeremy Wickremer spoke of the fact that each of us are potentially change-agents, with the capacity to do actions that can have a big impact on the environment – our own lives, our communities and the larger environment. And that what is more potent than merely drawing up solutions from a logical methodology, is to start with the right questions, which prompts creativity in itself. Specifically, he mentioned that your intention – within the guise of a question – will often be answered. He more recently wrote in an article “Our Invisible World” about the fact that many things which steer human behavior, emotions, health, psychological and spiritual well-being have to do with the energy that lies beneath the actions. And that the common illnesses which affect modern man and the crisis of violence that threat human cultures, have to do with a disconnect. This disconnect is within our own selves, our patterns and habits of how we live our lives. There is a disconnect within ourselves, among one another and that humans have with other creatures and nature; which is presently resulting in the greatest magnitude of habitat destruction, dissemination of species and global ecological balances and health.

The biggest disharmony of all is perhaps our relationship with the natural world.

Daniel Goleman is the psychologist, science journalist and author of “Emotional Intelligence”. He posits that non-cognitive skills can matter as much as a person’s I.Q. (Intelligence Quotient) for workplace success in “Working with Emotional Intelligence”. In 2007, Goleman wrote about “Social Intelligence” and in 2009, “Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy Can Change Everything”

So called ‘primitive people’, without having had the use of technological tools that more ‘advanced’ civilizations have had at their disposal and for their distraction, have had thousands of years of penetration into the invisible world that the modern Western world has only been starting to grasp is in the last 50 years. And with the spiritual and emotional well-being deficit that modern man has come to feel, this dis-ease of the human spirit, disconnect with oneself, growing obesity, growing psychological disorders and reliance on quick-fixes such as pharmaceuticals, and growing disharmony and feelings of isolation, have reached towards and cherished many ancient traditions that have evolved in the Eastern World to ease their dis-ease and treat their disharmony with something more than a quick fix of treating the symptoms instead of the disorder. They have reached towards practices of meditation, yoga, t’ai chi and walking into nature and silence, with a visceral understanding that these practices have short and long term benefits.

Listening to Intuition is the Wisdom of the Heart.

There is so much we can do, and we do have the ability to consciously act towards sustainability.

Many little voices make a tremendous noise, and many little gestures, create big changes.

WHAT | Seeking Artist Residency /\ Sustainable Community | WHERE Europe | WHEN Yesterday

WHAT: Ideally, I’d like to find a place where artists, musicians, writers and creatives can live and exchange their board and meals with work on sustainable green projects and the commitment to adhering to a weekly or bi-weekly series of scheduled benchmarks of deliverables: what they’ve achieved in that period in terms of their own work projects. This achievement report would correspond with a meeting involving all of the residents; to offer each other advise, critique and possibilities of collaboration.

WHERE: I prefer to be based in Europe, though I’m always open to ideas and travel. Does anyone in the world, know of something of this nature that exists?

WHEN: Once again I find myself almost homeless, after a ‘workaway’ gig in Brooklyn that I had applied for and been accepted 3 months in advance, hadn’t worked out after the first week.

Pic a few years ago of my parents in the yard they planted. father James deceased 2013.

Here’s a drawing I just did of this photograph> a Christmas present for my mother Lois. Framed it after the final retouches!

Framed after final touches an illustration of my parents James and Lois Keiter

I’ve changed it a couple times before framing it, and this photograph of the framed one is the final version.

Carol’s drawing of mother and dad, Lois and James Keiter

My drawing of my parents James and Lois Keiter

In the meantime, I have dozens of articles to write, a book to complete, music to practice and compose and illustrations that I wish to continue to create. My requirements in order to deliver: time, shelter, nutrition and a positive & safe environment with electricity and internet access. As I am not savvy with my own marketing or google adware and the like – in order to monetize my blogs – I fall into the same quandary.

One thing I excel at, is approaching people whom I’ve never met before. I love to converse, exchange ideas, listen to peoples’ stories and further research and communicate subjects. I do this no matter where I am; interacting in public places and as a seasoned hitchhiker. Often the drivers who pick people up are those who like to converse, hear stories and tell their own. I’ve traveled to and lived in several countries (have barely begun to travel as extensively as I would like) and hosted people as well as surfed on peoples’ couches through https://www.couchsurfing.com. I love to communicate: verbally, in writing, illustration and photographs.

An option of mine is to couchsurf, associated with furthering my own project. I met a French girl at the PlacetoB in Paris who has been living for the past year and a half exclusively couchsurfing throughout France. She has had success. I could offer on my own youtube channel a video of the projects I’m involved in, and regularly reveal what I’m achieving on a bi-weekly basis. I would reveal my work in various media, adhering to benchmarks of what I deliver on a bi-weekly basis. In exchange for the couchsurfing hosts, I would offer cooking, cleaning, piano & bass guitar lessons, computer software music & graphic design training, language instruction, portraits of the family, health & fitness training, etc.

Why? >
>I thought that my blogging should pause while I seek out monetized income by delivering this same material – in the form of dozens of articles – querying environmental publications. Upon investigating a dozen or so publications. As someone unknown and low on the totem pole, though each have their own rules of submission, all say that there will be a 3 to 4 month time period before they can respond, if they do at all.

I have begun investigating cooperative sustainable communities and eco villages with the idea of living in a community and sharing the various activities and work needed to be done – growing food, cooking, repairing, child-care, entertainment – yet until one physically meets the people, it is hard to blindly commit to any length of time until one has visited the group in person.

I know that there are artist grants & residencies out there, however I don’t have 3 months or even 3 weeks to research these, for which most require scouting the contact people and apply within a particular time period and waiting in a potentially long line of people for positions.

COP21 Activists Sharing their Stories & Solutions to Seed the World

Snap decision to go to Paris to be among the flurry of events around the COP21 – which most people call cop as in policeman, rather than spelling out ‘see oh pee’. The actual commencement of the talks between the delegates began on the 30th of November. You can watch these live at any of the following links.
http://unfccc6.meta-fusion.com/cop21/           http://www.cop21paris.org/agenda
http://unfccc.int/meetings/paris_nov_2015/meeting/8926/php/view/schedule.php

Place de la République shoes Nov 29 representing marchers

The huge anticipated March in Paris was announced by the government on the 18th of November to be cancelled due to the attacks on the 13th in Paris. The French coalition of at least 250 different activist groups http://coalitionclimat21.org/en answered this by organizing a shoe in, where at Place du la Republique’ in Paris people placed their shoes, representing that their presence in spirit for the March.An Sung Sui as well as Pope Frances expedited their shoes to place them there as well.

Aung San Suu Kyi delivered her shoes

Pope Francis delivered his shoes to Place de la Republique

The photograph, compliments of a Frenchman from Lyon, who together with a group of other lawyers and judges are organizing legislation as a means to protect spaces that are ‘in between’ other countries’ ownership and property: the air, water…

10000 people form a human chain Place de la République

I’m so very fortunate to be staying at the St. Christopher’s Inns which has been occupied by Place to B

Place to B, Agenda COP 21 Events, Program, Seminars, Radio…

which is packed with continued events and information, speakers. There are 600 people booked here representing 40 different countries and a plethora of different movements. Many of the women in my dorm room in the hostel are members of Act!onaid | ActionAid International. Women who have come from numerous countries in Africa, the director from Johannesburg, South Africa.

An Inconvenient Youth, by Slater Jewell-Kemker

Basically all the different groups here have organized meetings and methods to place themselves and their activities into the public’s eye; organizing and staging peaceful & quiet public demonstrations in the streets to inform and place their activities into the public’s awareness. http://www.globalplatforms.org/about-activista

TM Transformational Media Summit Storytellers, media professionals and changemakers

I’m presently attending a workshop regarding ‘creative storytelling and how this compels people to action’. Hosted by Katherine Adams, a woman who has used her talents in many different ways, among which is the director of Goodness T.V. Reporters d’Espoire : Pour une information qui donne envied d’agir/Reporters of Hope: for information that fuels the desire to act Emotion is at the heart of creative storytelling and this is what will induce people into action. Stories that tell of innovative solutions can be shared so that these will spread all over the world. One person’s resilience and solutions can be shared. The words here among the network of people here at Place to B is talking about how the media has to change the way in the way that they transmit information. The message has to be towards the solution.

‘Climate Heroes’ film by Maxime Riché, Project Founder, Photographer

The day has been packed with a string of events; a summit with numerous different panelists talking to an audience of bloggers, writers, journalists, entrepreneurs, designers and more – a full repertoire of very valuable information that is being extended by people who have made differences in all different arenas. They and the messages they are exchanging are about making the necessary changes to the world – economically, politically and economically, from the bottom up. I’ve only participated for one day and am quite blown away with all of the captivating information shared through workshops I’ve attended, hosted by the Place to B platform of discussions about confirming new paradigms and ways to talk about a variety of subjects. Many of the talks are in French as well as English. This evening had big enough names and a big enough crowd to use a live simultaneous translator for Naomi Klein and the climate scientist James Hansen. At different times the Place to B program brings in musicians and artists to discuss as well as perform. There are lots of creative and passionate people who really are ‘following their bliss’. There’s a plethora of stimulation and fantastic exchanges that occur when you’re among a bunch of people with a mission to use their hearts and minds to make positive changes. Many of the talks are about how to change the paradigm of how the media and art can inspire the public with messages that deliver hope. And that change – which must be imminent – can best happen from the grass routes level, as people spread among one another success stories from all over the globe that ripple into more and more communities following to create more of the same.

I will be interviewing a few different people over the next weeks to add to my blog and sit some days at the location where the delegates are continuing their 2 week climate talks.

Helen Keller | Curious mind & Courageous Heart | Soaring Because of No Social Cues

It occurs to me why Helen Keller was so ahead of her time, bold in her statements and fearless in her ways, because she never had any social cues telling her that she COULDN’T; no discouragement from the raising of an eyebrow, the subtle changes in a person’s voice, a loud condemnation, body language that reveals disapproval. Having said that, I really haven’t read about her life, the family environment she was brought up in or what strengths of spirit those around her had. She didn’t have sight, hearing or speech to put her into a tentative or fearful place. And with lack of social admonishments or critiques, she soared to greater heights than most people…who learn to be meek, insecure or unsure of themselves because of the feedback that others may give them.

Helen Keller quote security is a superstition

It occurred to me when I pulled out an image I have accompanied by one of my favorite quotes by her about security. I thought of how people are trained to behave, cued to keep quiet, blocked by ridicule through tone of a voice or body language…

Helen Keller Life is a daring adventure or nothing

I love these quotes and look forward to reading more.

Calling for EChOACTiVate Partners & Core Team, Refugee Manpower, Best Weapon is Education & Empowerment

I have an idea which continues to evolve. I would like to know if any of you recipients – environmental organizations or individuals – can join with me or bring me under your wing so that we can do this together? I’d like to quickly put together a concise plan as a pitch for next week at the Paris Climate Talks, for people to take home and ponder. I have not yet booked a flight, however am willing to do so within the next 24 hours and will work continuously with others with research and development and writing a proposal sketch to present. By its nature, it involves many; a consensus of scientists, business advocates, governmental support as well as people within the communities where these physical structures would be built. It begins in Europe. The original idea which I had presented in August of this year, has a new twist. Specifically the manpower involving the placement, education and training of refugees, who working together with communities throughout Europe, would aspire to be cooperatively working in the implementation of structures that would be greening the environment and have business models that lead to a democratization of wealth. It would be a win:win situation; helping the climate, replacing petroleum and coal and dirty industries with clean ones, greening the environment, creating jobs for local European communities and for refugees, and would be empowering for any involved. I say yes, the money is there, it simply needs to be redirected; i.e. from weapons and military, to education and the building of a green infrastructure throughout Europe and the world.

In the 1970s, refugees from Vietnam, ‘boat people’ were introduced into various communities in the United States. My mother in central Pennsylvania volunteered to help one particular family which she was assigned to. She would go to their home regularly to tutor the family in English and help the three sons with their home work. Two of the boys became dentists and opened up a joint practice in the town I was raised in which just celebrated their 20th year anniversary. The other son is a doctor. The relationship between the two families has lasted to the present day. Their entire family have remained friends, and I’ve had several dental appointments with them when passing through town. They are genuinely kind people who have remained grateful and loyal to the initial help they received, ever since. In other words, many of the refugees are good people who wish simply to have security, opportunities for education and development for themselves and their children. In many ways their intent and self-determination will enhance the local communities they’ve been introduced into and ‘give back’ the chance they were given to survive and thrive.

Word cloud of involved actions in EChOACTiVate

This was my initial sketch – it’s the same information. I particularly need guidance in finding the right contact people and groups, to help to kindle this idea. I would appreciate any suggestions!

lets mots, les activité
pour EChOACTIvate

Often the biggest obstacle is not knowing exactly what we can do, or how to get started.

Often taking the first step is the hardest! Even finding information of how to accomplish things may involve more time than you feel that you have.

That’s where EChOACTiVate comes in!

This would at the same time deal with the world climate crisis by developing and building renewable energy structures, in areas where these are amenable and relevant to that environment. The systems would require monetary investment, yet ideally I visualize creating operations that are cooperative in nature, so that the builders and owners distribute the wealth among themselves and into the community, a more democratic form of business. Along with scientists and developers, I foresee an operation that would involve education and training, and finding in addition to citizens of that community, a placement of refugees, who would also be trained to be the man power behind the implementation of these renewable energy structures, community gardens, the building of literally green buildings, a planting of gardens and flowers and trees to create bee-highways, etc.

I had already conceived of this as a means of bringing together communities to participate, with the addition of a nature of celebration and gathering, with music together with the education. It has evolved however in the last week, in light of the continued incidents of terror around the globe. I feel that the edge of the sword of terror – if you will – is the reaction of the more radically charged Islamic peoples to the inequities and economic domination of the Western world, a structure that has been filtering throughout the world, which increases economic inequality and rather than delivering messages of cooperation, delivers ones of competition and materialism.

was EChOACTiVate ist

I would like people to join together with me or to invite me to begin delegating this idea into group that can manifest this. I need business minds, system developers, negotiators, lawyers, scientists and people passionate about the environment and animal habitat renewal and the democratization of wealth and power throughout the planet.

lo que tu puedes hacer con EChOACTiVate

Calling for EChOACTiVate Partners & a Core Team: to join and help to create the Non-Profit Mobile Task Force igniting Music, Education and ECOACTiV initiatives in communities around the world. The echo of results will propel others to also EChOACTiVate!

Contact me if you wish to partner, participate or guide me regarding what organizations may wish to act as a financial umbrella. ¡ echoactivate@gmail.com !

A myriad of individuals and environmental organizations have been warning as well as educating us about Climate Change and Global Warming and the continued threat of habitat loss and the destruction of many species. They inform us that we must change, that we need to act. It is clear that industry, particularly the dirty ones such as coal and petroleum, are cause to the more sweeping and devastating injuries to the the health and well-being of humans and species all over the planet. Yet our individual actions, collectively have wrought a lot of destruction, which can be reversed, through our adopting new habits. Certainly Obama’s new hislegislation will effectively persuade these larger monolithic companies to shift their practices, yet our future is also in our own hands. Our actions or non-action will determine our fate.

As we each learn – and share that information – about what we can do to transform our environments positively through action and taking ownership for its protection every where we go, we will produce dramatic results. Our individual actions will not only raise the quality of our own lives and the spaces we inhabit, but will collectively have an enormous impact. Since all of life is entirely interdependent, what we improve in our immediate environments will echo, and spread all over the planet. Through ‘dis-ease’, we will birth the remedies, to the point that they are the trend.

Various groups have been guiding us to have a voice among our legislatures. They offer solutions for what we can do. Climate Change and World Wildlife Fund and What We Can Do. Avaaz has a Avaaz has a Climate ToolKit. Recently Pope Frances expressed the urgent need of the world population to take action and ownership with his Pope Francis’ Encyclical: “Faith Climate Action Kit”. In the last 48 hours, the United States President Barack Obama addressed this urgency, pleading for the American people (and all the World) to take this seriously as a fact, and to ACT, with his “President Barack Obama’s “America’s Clean Power Plan””

Just as a flame or campfire draws peoples’ attention, so is music something that captivates and entrances people. Music can cause people to stop in their tracks. It engages all regardless of their cultural heritage or economic ‘status’. Music attracts the young and the elderly. It is a focal point. Music drives our passions. It is close to our hearts. That’s why EChOACTiVate is environmental action for the climate that is musically driven! Music will be the element that brings people together. The glue for social cohesion. And since we all have subjective musical tastes, EChOACTiVate will have to accommodate all sorts of musical tastes🙂 EChOACTiVate will provide all sorts of music – from classical to country, rock to jazz, folk to punk – depending on the tastes of the particular community we engage with. Music is a force which inspires and energizes! EChOACTiVate will coordinate ecological action by bringing different members of the community into groups, according to their capabilities and interests.

Presently, we are at a pivotal point of urgency in terms of how our individual and collective actions and habits affect our environment. Our planet is either our hell or our heaven. If we continue along without doing anything and rely on ‘old world’ methods of generating power and fuel, our non-action will wreak more havoc and irreversible devastation.

Yet if we all work together and educate one another to make changes in our individual habits and choices towards investment in clean, renewable energy and fuel sources and divest from dirty energy, we will collectively impact our environment in an extremely positive way.

Our choices, habits and actions will make our own neighborhoods and towns more inviting and healthy for not only the humans who live there, but all the other indigenous creatures.

It is immanently clear that it is not our planet that is in peril, but the lives of most of the species inhabiting it. Our proactive actions must start imminently !-)

That’s where you, the public comes in. Let’s do this together. Let’s EChOACTiVate

EChOACTiVate is a community outreach program in the form of a mobile citizen action campaign. Like a ‘food truck’ that is mobile, EChOACTiVate is a ‘music/information stage’. It is a virtual portal of information to inform and act as a central information exchange point as well as a physical mobile team, which visits communities worldwide, to introduce the ‘How To’s” of the action the community decides to invest in, and catalyzes them to take implement their actions, through education and guidelines from mini DIY Do-It_yourself projects to more robust ones.

Arriving to the community to set up the stage, EChOACTiVate will coordinate the music and information to inspire and set the guidelines for task orientation, from the beginning stages through to its completion. EChOACTiVate will gather people together to initiate discussions on initiatives and help the members of the community to get started.

The projects are anything from education about what types of foods to eat and physical activities that can act as health prevention, to how to create friendly habitats in your own back yards and public spaces to attract pollinators and ensure the survival of many of the creatures that share our immediate environment. EChOACTiVate activities cover a vast breadth of choices. From planting trees, community gardens, to planting flowers and vegetation in your own backyards and on vertical fences and walls to attract biodiversity, creating bee-highways, land bridges over motorways for the safe passage of indigenous animals, DIY (do-it-yourself) installation of solar panels, windmills, wave and biomass energy procedures, trash clean-Up, ocean cleanup, ocean plastic removal, info-workshops on recycling and water conservation. EChOACTiVate will also provide and exchange information on more medium and long-term projects, demonstrating projects that are proven effective that require a team of scientists and engineers to construct.

We are at a tipping point concerning human induced climate change, which negatively impacts the lives of all species on the planet.

This has come about through the actions of the human species, and it can be reversed through the actions of the human species. If we physically and socially join together in our actions, it will make them that much easier to accomplish and more fun.

DoTheMath Gobal Climate Crisis Kumi Naidoo Greenpeace website

We all sometimes need that extra incentive. Coordinated through exchanges between our web-based non-profit and visiting team with a community, EChOACTiVate will deliver the information and the tools for that community of people to get started. The EChOACTiVate team will ‘land’ in a community through coordinated bi-lateral dialogue with a neighborhood or community that elects to take some ECOATIV measures. The mobile EChOACTiVate team will arrive in a town in the form of a one or two-day centralized stage. Where they combine music celebration with an information portal, that will organize that community into implementing action. The community will choose what projects are most relevant and needed in their area. The EChOACTiVate core team and volunteers will facilitate getting the community started; through providing the education, information – in the form of speakers and work-shops – to organize that community in their acquisition of tools (through local businesses) to mobilize them into action.

There are plenty of DIY – Do It Yourself – projects that citizens can implement through working together for a short period of time. EChOACTiVate will work with the consensus and the relevance of what a community needs and help them to get started. The capability and the means will come through people working together.

midsummer hitch nYc Einstein Love

EChOACTiVate

>>>>>introduces ecological and environmental proactive measures to individual communities, with music as the initial community binding glue. Music is often what brings people together. It is the virtual maypole, around which EChO -ReVoLuTioN unfolds >>> as a celebratory means of bringing people together and stepping out of their routine. And as communities and individuals empower themselves through their own works, their efforts and accomplishments will echo to other communities, giving others’ incentive to participate in their own EChO project.

MeaningS of EChO

That’s where you, the public comes in! Together we can do this! Each ECOACTV action will echo and inspire other communities to do the same. Our actions will reverberate. Others will be inspired to demonstrate how their community EChOACTiVated to make wonderful differences.

Echo by Alexandre Cabanel 1874 Mount Kithairon

Reiterating: EChOACTiVate is both a cyber portal providing information about the divers ECOACTV DIY Do-It-Yourself projects available for that community to decide upon, and a mobile stage (built of a the core EChOACTiVate team and volunteers) that arrive to the community to provide workshops, speakers and the strategy of what they will need to do to implement their plans of action.

I am one individual with a vision. I know that I want to participate and I know that it is dramatically more engaging to have some sort of celebration with music, to get my attention and find joy in socializing and participating. I wish to make EChOACTiVate a non-profit formed through a number of people who will partner with me. The more quickly I find people who wish to help me to build this, the more quickly we can use our skills and talents to make this dream into a reality.

Calling for partners and/or remote coworkers who work on a consultant/as needed basis: web developers, web designers, app developers, lawyers, accountants, program directors, educational coordinators, biologists, zoologists, climatologists, engineers, researchers, traveling fact gatherers of environmental adaptation success stories Worlwide, artists, musicians, stage hands, a mobile team of presenters and speakers, fundraisers and funding.

Schools could get involved in ‘Expeditionary Learning’ projects, learning by doing. Environmental projects involving energy conservation and the preservation of animal habitats involve: chemistry, biology, statistics, mathematics, geography, geology, environmental sciences and physics – all sorts of learning. As communities become involved to EChOACTiVate, they will learn not only about the dangers of non-action, with respect to erosion, draught, effects of pollutants, the dangers of industrialized farming and fishing and GMO’s, but they will learn about healthy alternatives and what actions – no matter how small – from preventive health measures to the ‘how-to’s’ of getting started in their project(s)>to make their immediate environments more eco-friendly and pleasant for all species.

Corporate, State or Federal could match funds raised by townspeople, (fragment of the U.S. Political campaign budget🙂 and Federal andState government subsidies or drives to support projects from the simple to the more technically specialized projects involving higher material and equipment costs.

Putting people to work on a Worldwide level, one community at a time. ecoactivate.org will compile lists of the array of projects that communities opt to engage in and monitor and correlate the exchange in open forums in which the community decides on what they wish to do to be ECOACTV in their area and what they’ve accomplished, in the EChOACTiVate campaign rippling across the planet. ecoactivate.org is the portal to gather and exchange information, to coordinate the mobile EChOACTiVate presenters and musicians to come to your town in a face-to-face hands-on delivery and designation of plans for the community itself to implement.

This is a rough sketch! I need you to help me transform it into a reality.

Contact me if you wish to partner, participate or guide me regarding what organizations may wish to act as a financial umbrella. ¡ echoactivate@gmail.com !

§ a web-based interactive information portal ecoactivate.org (not yet constructed) providing information in categories of work projects and DIY information from simpler to more technically complex projects. The EChOACTiVate website will provide open forums for communities to investigate their options, suggest ECOACTV projects of their own and as well as to ask questions and work out schedules. The website will also project what different communities have accomplished with more success stories.

§ a mobile unit with a core team of organizers and educators visiting communities to catalyze their projects: including special guest musicians, educators, specialists and technicians upon Touch Down in that community. This occurs on a one or two day central area within the town, where information and a plan of action for the community to take for the project(s) they have decided to embark on, is provided.

§ This takes place on the “ECOACTV Opening Day’ – a celebration with music and education, vendors and informational work-shops. The EChOACTiVate core team and volunteers touch down to provide guidance and incentive, and certainly helping hands in the beginning stages.

§ The community has a continual ‘two-way’ information exchange, from offering information before the EChOACTiVate group has arrived in their town, to participating by inviting their own town musicians, bands and dj’s to perform for the Informational Opening day as well as during the days or weeks that the community is working on their project. I haven’t worked out the local noise ordinance rules, but this is an exceptional event during exceptional times requiring awareness and action.

§ The successes of various groups will be shared on the EChOACTiVate website and Facebook page as well as through an EChOACTiVate app for mobile devices, so that neighborhoods and communities can compare and display what they’ve accomplished; as well as to provide their feedback, comments and suggestions.

§ whereas digital technology can often isolate people, it can also bring them together to physically join one another:
• apps to record community progress & success stories
• competitions and challenges between communities

§ music is key; with live entertainment from musicians and bands on the opening day and special guests. The town can contribute their own live entertainment with musicians, bands creating their own acts on the Opening Day. Special guests will participate.

§ The Touch Down Opening Day will be the arena for the local citizens to assemble in a celebratory way with the music and food and/or product vendors. Side by side, they will participate in actively learning and sharing information, prior to being organized into groups to work together on teams, according to their physical size, strength, skills and expertise.

§ At this Opening event a series of workshops and meetings will take place to lay out the plans.

§ If a project thaT has been discusses between community members and the EChOACTiVate team in advance is of a more complex nature, EChOACTiVate will help to find consultants to bridge the information gap and parlay what the community’s options are. Educators, speakers, technical consultants and habitat specialists would contribute information on a variety of conservation and preservation topics as well as on themes specifically relevant to the articular chosen project by the community: to assist in determining the material, hardware and man-power needs to get the project started.
People do best, what they like to do most.

§ The EChOACTiVate website will also host live-streamed interactive telecasts of participating groups in other countries, as info-seminars as well as speeches consulting experts in the fields regarding whatever technology is being researched, developed and implemented.

§ As groups EChOACTiVate, their actions and own stories are shared by word-of-mouth, visitors to their town, twitter, Facebook, through the EChOACTiVate App revealing achievements and and on the echoactivate.org Success Stories section.

Each metamorphoses will echo…and invite others to EChOACTiVate and share their own success stories.

Did you hear what Memphis, or Cincinnati, Los Angeles, Pittsburg, Brooklyn, New Dehli, Sao Paulo, Montpelier, Barcelona or Guangxi did? What are you waiting for? Let’s do this. Let’s EChoACTiVate!

Engaging and coordinating local townspeople, businesses and industries to participate, draw resources and form teams of man-power to join together and take action together. Resulting in improved quality of their own environment and learning about all the ways that we the human species can adopt habits and develop awareness about our connection to our environment and to all other species. An public engagement in an environment of celebration, fun and learning, that delights and empowers the people as they transform their own environment.

This idea resulted from Carol Keiter, the blogger

Carol Keiter informational architect of EChOACTiVate

Carol holding the plastic globe

in her aim to follow her own path.

A tagcloud summing up Carol Keiter’s interests and passions.

Well, why not? > Donations showing your support of the evolution of EChOACTiVate as well as Carol Keiter’s writing, eBook, music composition, photography & illustrations are gratefully accepted!

Journalist who Reveals the Truth | George Monbiot

Eureka, yesterday I made an astounding discovery, the writings of George Monbiot. I feel like I’ve struck gold. Perhaps this reveals my naïvité. I hadn’t been familiar with his name or writings, having not been a regular reader of the British Newspaper “The Guardian” among the places he has contributed. Monbiot’s candid humor amuses and his scope pierces your awareness. Recirculated by The Mind Unleashed | Uncover Your True Potential Monbiot’s article “The Eco-Apocalypse in Indonesia That No One is Talking About” was extracted from his writing within his website category Environment and the Natural World, Nothing to See Here. He states, “In the greatest environmental disaster of the 21st Century (so far), Indonesia has been blotted out by smoke. And the media.”

His website http://www.monbiot.com features a ferocious list of categories of articles he’s written about. The blog posted yesterday within this same category, is provocative, to say the least.The Dolphin Killers of Cardigan Bay/ Subtitled and predicated with the statement “Why does the Welsh government propose this gratuitous act of destruction? It refuses to say.” He talks of the absurdity that the primary place where dolphins gather in the British Isles, Cadigan Bay, which is – his words, ‘on paper’ – a ‘Special Area of Conservation’, is precisely where Welsh scallop dredgers and beam trawlers are given reign to destroy the seabed; the primary source of food for young dolphins.

Here’s a picture of George Monbiot as guest blogger on rspb | Royal Society for the Protection of Birds | Giving Nature a Home

His writings are crisp exposés, rather than soggy, one dimensional limping around the truth. His broad perspective brought to every analysis comes from his driving thoroughness in investigating the topic and background interest in the environment, politics and economics. This makes all of his writings on whatever subject refreshingly clear, in how he pierces into the truth rather than the typical white-washed and watered down mass media glimpses into a story.

Life-changing for me, because he’s a true journalist who cuts to the core, uncovering and revealing stories from multifaceted angles. “The Eco-Apocalypse in Indonesia That No One is Talking About” reveals promptly the difference between typical mainstream journalism and his crisp dissection of the real issues and correlation to the real sources of the problem. In this case, the continuing practice of clear-cutting and burning rain forests in Indonesia, to support the lumber and palm oil industries, which together with El Niño and climate change, are manifesting as the worst ecological disaster and highest input of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, to date. His exposé of the political and economic culprits behind this manmade disaster lie beneath the story of the damage that is being done to the inhabitants, wildlife and nature there.

Upon reading the title of one of his books, “The Age of Consent; A Manifesto for a New World Order”, I immediately thought of Noam Chomsky’s “Manufacturing Consent; The Political Economy of the Mass Media”. Chomsky proposes that the mass communication media of the United States are a system of effective and powerful ideological institutions carrying out messages that reinforce certain ideals and tendencies among the population – propaganda. He states that the former ‘anti-Communism’ model of social control was replaced by the present ‘War on Terror’. In The Age of Consent, Monbiot writes that “Our task is not to overthrow globalization, but to capture it, and to use it as a vehicle for humanity’s first global democratic revolution.”

In Michael Meacher’s “ review of Monbiot’s The Age of Consent ” for the Guardian, Meacher states, “This is an extremely important book. George Monbiot offers a searchingly rigorous analysis of the sources of American power and presents a package of proposals that would radically redraw the present world order. It is breathtaking in its radicalism, but for anyone who is serious about tackling the current US hegemony, it is difficult to fault the logic.”

There are plenty of topics George Monbiot has written about, which you can read and educate yourself to your heart’s delight.

http://www.theguardian.com/profile/georgemonbiot
http://www.monbiot.com

Love over Fear | Education over Insulation

Last evening, as it gets dark at 5:15 already, I was bicycling back from the neighboring town where I attended a heart-rhythm mediation group session. From this I have two blogs:

This one over my experience cycling by a family in a town I passed through, and the other having to do with a recognition about health.

Health is Circulation | Letting things Flow | Diarrhetic vs Constipative (made up that word !-)

I had just come from riding through darkness and fog, pretty cool. Then as automobiles are the most dangerous things to avoid, I chose to ride down an ally rather than along the main drag filled with traffic.

Turning into the ally I heard voices and saw some kids and several adults standing near a trailer. Out called a boy of 4 or so in his high-pitched voice. “What’s your name”. Delighted, I called back, “Carol, what’s yours?”. I paused instead of continuing on as if not really caring for the answer. I hadn’t heard his name correctly. I turned around. Then the boy came running to show me his miniature toy soldier in his hand. Pretty sure it was a figure with two rifles, automatic weapons, in its hands! Now the urgency in the tenor of his father’s voice was increasing.

I approached the boy deliberately getting closer to the father’s periphery so that he could see me in full view. “What’s wrong with talking?”, I asked. “I’m just trying to teach my kid a lesson.” he countered. He had cut off the contact that his child initiated and the interaction we could have had. Why?

Disappointed, I started riding away and then I decided to ride back to them. I said, “I just have to say this. I grew up as a child of his age in this town when my parent’s lived here. They taught me to be kind, loving and compassionate. I was always approaching people like your son when I was his age.” It’s a genuine curiosity and joy in interacting with strangers, with someone new. Gathering new information and exchanging information is how a child genuinely learns about the world around them.

Education is an exchange of information. It is what babies do as they are learning about the world around them. I expressed to the father, “I don’t know what kind of lesson you’re trying to give to your son, but I don’t think that it’s the right one. I bet you have guns too.” I rode away mildly disgusted and he called behind me, “ride safely”, which may or may not have been genuine.

I understand that kids do not have the same capacity to judge, because they haven’t had too much time on earth to learn through observing other peoples’ behavior to understand rationally or intuitively if there’s something amiss or not quite present in that person. But to block off all communication, especially when the parent is right there, seems inappropriate to me. So he’s protecting his family from the so-called enemy, a female bicycling by on her way home from a meditation group who responds to his child’s call.

People often have the same response when they pick me up hitchhiking. “Aren’t you afraid? It’s very dangerous!” Well, if you count yourself, do you find yourself dangerous? I’ve had rides with couples, straight and gay, coaches, teachers, farmers, students…Dangerous? Then wow, what are you thinking when you’re walking down a street populated with people? Are you scanning for danger? Or are you checking out this person’s shoes, noticing this person’s gait, that person’s dress style, the laughter coming from these kids over here, the snippet of conversation between a couple passing by.

My point, we, at least I, am not anticipating and expecting danger. Naturally, I’m not living under the circumstances of growing up in a war zone of 5 generations, or in an area where there’s a great deal of tension between the have’s and the have not’s, where extreme wealth borders shanty towns. I understand that there, one would learn not to trust and be wary of many more incidences of theft and kidnappings.

But generally, when you’re walking down the street, are you feeling that the world is full of dangerous people? Or are you happy to exchange a smile with someone you pass by or to make a passing comment to share in some kind of exchange? That is, if you’re looking up from your phone to notice someone passing by.

Reading some Einstein quotes the other day, this one impressed me.

Einstein Speak to everyone the same

This may seem completely off track, but behaviorally, it’s completely congruent. Earlier in the day on my way by bicycle, I went to visit a cat at a barn that I’m familiar with, ‘Goldie’. Goldie had always been quite friendly, launching towards me. Yesterday, for the first time I saw a new kitten there. The kitten appeared immediately. It approached me, full of curiosity and affection. Then Goldie appeared. Came towards me, but then sat down just out of reach. To my sadness, I realized that now Goldie, was ‘Grumpy’ or ‘Grouchy’. I had noticed before that he would hiss at ‘Gordo’, the fat friendly cat, but thought that this was out of competition. Now, when the kitten went up to Grumpy to nudge him, Grumpy hissed. Perhaps Grumpy was maintaining his dominance or leveraging his power, but really, he just was isolating himself. The kitten, I’ll call ’Giddy’ didn’t respond to Grumpy’s hiss. He just meandered away back over to me, where she affectionately jumped onto my legs and arms and purred and played.

I certainly think it’s much more fun to meet new people and explore new things, than sticking to the familiar and tried-out route. I’d rather learn and be exposed to new information than remaining insular and isolated.

Just sayin’.

I told the father that I don’t believe in weapons, nor in assuming that strangers are bad…I mean, get your priorities straight people. Is this anxiety or paranoia an American phenomenon, or is it a modern day one – driven by the news media? Does it reach across the western world, into Asia, Africa? I’m not sure.

I guess for sure there are differences between cities and rural areas. I’d love to hear comments about it. Do families in Russia, Denmark, Finland, England or Italy, freak out if their kids talk to strangers? Are strangers ‘bad’? Geez, it’s just sending a message of fear and distrust. Ouch!

I can remember when I lived in San Francisco and I’d walk to the Marina area – filled with yuppies and wannabes; a wealthier, upwardly mobile part of town. As a young woman I’d greet people walking by, male or female, with a friendly hello. A significant amount would either ignore me or look at me suspiciously. Whereas when I lived in the rural community of Taos, New Mexico, if you’d happen to be walking or bicycling on a dirt road outside of the town, the Spanish, Indian or Caucasian person driving by in their pickup truck (often the case) in the middle of nowhere, would wave. You, a stranger, would be greeted as a friend. I heard that the nomadic people, Ber Ber’s for example, would never ‘not let a stranger into their tent’ as they were passing by. This could be a life or death situation for that person or for oneself, if caught in the same circumstances – of being in a remote area without water or food. By the way, the guy who took the picture of us on Halloween in NYC is Algerian, of Ber Ber descent, he informed me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berbers Interesting. I’ll have to ask him.

I really want to know if this is an American thing (guns, paranoia), European, Northern European, metropolitan or – in fact – more of a modern thing that is more economically and politically driven? The age of fear? Is it coming more from the media than people’s day to day experiences? Is everyone dangerous? When you’re walking down the street in your town, in a city, are you scanning around for danger? Or are you noticing interactions, laughter, someone’s clothing, what someone is doing, a smile or gentle eyes? I would hope that when you go out to a restaurant, to a game, a concert, an event… you are approaching the people not as ‘strangers’ – the enemy within – but as potential friends.

The image below links to an article about mindfulness 10 Easy Ways You Can Practice Mindfulness Every Day, presented by The Mind Unleashed

the Mind Unleashed – an article on Mindfulness

Halloween nYc Hitchabout ’15 | Travel – Golden Elixir – Sharing Information & Hearts | Great Pacific Garbage Patch

I have no income. I love Halloween. I love New York city. So, I hitched to celebrate Halloween in nYc. I work all the time – I simply don’t receive any money – YET – putting together my two blogs, food podcast, photographs I take, music that I play and compose or the book that I will complete within the next 7 months … ! I hitchhiked to nYc from Central PA for Halloween, and back the following day. I spent about $5 dollars over the weekend. Naturally, hitching in NYC drew some attention and comments (and I noticed some pics from peoples’ iPhones) down on Canal street in Lower Manhattan at the unusual site of seeing someone, anyone, standing along the three lanes of traffic inching towards the entrance to the Holland tunnel, holding up a “PA” sign. I had conversations among passersby with a French couple and an Austrian family, among others. I love languages and always go out of my way to interact with people when I detect a language with which I’m familiar; just to have the chance to interact and share information and smiles. I conversed with a French couple on my way back by a gas station along interstate 81 who had purchased a car upon arriving in the U.S. 3 months earlier. They were on their way to Quebec, where they will sell the car, after their months of traveling.

I had great rides, a fantastic time in Gotham city and tears of joy in the experiences that I had with the peoples’ whose lives touched mine en route.

The irony, is that barely a cent needed to be spent. Sure, I was hungry and sleepy, ha, but that’s part of the fun of it.

I had a wonderful time. Sure, I didn’t dine in the fashionable places or name drop who I sat next to at such and such club…but did happen by a synchronistic explosion of serendipities, upon the New York Village Halloween Parade which I knew nothing about until I discovered it would be starting within minutes of my arrival in Manhattan. I had already started to assemble my costume that was in my backpack and was talking with a woman standing before me who asked if I was going to the Parade. What parade? When does it start? It was starting within 20 minutes. I found out about where to go and was among thousands of people corralled in an area waiting to launch into the parade, which consisted of 50, 000 or so costumed people. That rearranged my plans entirely, a no brainer. I intended to go to a party in Brooklyn, but the parade took front seat. It was great timing, intuitive attention and open and friendly contact with people right next to me.

Huge display of every imaginable Halloween costume

http://gothamist.com/2015/11/01/91_photo_village_halloween_parade.php#photo-1

Gothamist 91 wild costumes Village Halloween Parade nYc 2015

“Thousands of people descended upon lower Sixth Ave. for the 42nd annual Village Halloween Parade. Lasting well over three hours and featuring dozens of mobile dance parties doubling as floats …. and approximately 60,000 often-outlandishly costumed revelers strolling, dancing, lurching, running, roller blading …. the parade is thought to be the largest such celebration in the world. The weather was perfect, the atmosphere festive, the costumes usually handmade and often pretty incredible…”

I can’t believe that I had no knowledge whatsoever about the ‘Village Halloween Parade’. Wow, was I glad I discovered it. My costume was a ‘Mermaid caught in a fish net in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. I was wrapped in bubblewrap as the mermaid’s tail (walking in tiny steps like a geisha – or a fish outa water), tangled in fish net with plastic dripping off my costume – having gotten stuck in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. This article mentions the young man who is doing something about it. There are vortexes of garbage archipelagos in every ocean. The GPGP is larger than Texas, and deep.

Great Pacific Garbage Patch

tip of the burg Great Pacific Garbage Patch

I didn’t have my camera with me nor a smart phone to document my 48 hour hitchabout. Yet Yougourthen kindly sent me the pic he took of us at the G bar in Manhattan hours after the parade had ended. G bar, indeed a gay bar, was packed with people, had a great ambience, good music and dancing and a fantastic array of costumed gorgeous men. he he.

Thank Yougourthen Ayouni for the pic of he and Carol at the G bar Manhattan halloween

Sure, with a working schedule, dependents, less time available and any other constrictions, one can’t just dart of hitching for a trip thousands of miles away for a couple days. However, I’m pointing out that since travel and discovery is about learning about the spirit of the place and its people and the other creatures and life that inhabit the area, it’s not about consuming, and spending, but finding joy in discovery and social interaction. I have done many hitchabouts which I’ve written about, particularly interesting when I lived based in Berlin, Germany. Here’s a string of these writings on my blog. https://carolkeiter.wordpress.com/?s=hitchabout . I love sharing information and smiles with people. I meet such wonderful people during my rides, that this in itself is as enjoyable and exciting as the destination. People whose lives I otherwise would not necessarily come into contact wtih. Sure, i realize that this is not everyone’s thing. but travel doesn’t need to always cost so much! i better stop now. I discovered by synchronicity (timing and intuitive attention and open and friendly contact with people right next to me) that the Village NY Halloween Parade was happening, and joined in with my costume that was in my backpack and ready to be assembled.

And because my heart was sickened every time I saw the body of a dead dear along the highway en route, I’m writing a corresponding blog about animal bridges / wildlife crossings. https://digesthis.wordpress.com/2015/11/04/animal-bridges-wildlife-crossing-witnessed-way-too-many-dead-deer-en-route-to-new-york-city-through-pennsylvania-and-new-jersey/

which provide means for animals to have their habitat extended, rather than blocked, by human construction. Why do I care? Because I care about all creatures which are awesome and beautiful inhabitants of this planet.

Carol’s artwork discovered in sketchbooks & journals

carol’s artwork discovered in sketchbooks and journals

Here are pictures of the evolution of a shower curtain that became my art display.

and there are more various-sized and in various conditions of art tucked away in folders…

and well, sure, time to do some more!

United States of Anxiety | the Commercial Messiah

Yet another mass shooting in the United States of Anxiety. Why did he do it? Where does the anger come from? or feelings of powerlessness?…Well, after watching the newscast which switched to a commercial break (which I usually mute and ignore), I looked at the commercials as a stranger in a strange land. Advertisements about happy, carefree, beautiful people who are laughing and having fun together … about to purchase more things to embellish their perfectly happy lives. I thought to myself; these messages are enough to drive a person who is already borderline weak and emotionally unstable, to feel even less worthy and more resistant & envious; magnifying what they lack, and increasing their loneliness and neediness…

I’m looking at this (shooting trend) not from a behavioral standpoint of an individual who’s been diminished and criticized with words by their parents -emotional abuse, physical abuse, or neglected completely – or as someone who perhaps all his/her life was deprived of comforts and security. I’m not looking at it from a psychological or chemical imbalance standpoint or the lack of nurturing families.

I’m just looking at it from the container of the cultural message packaged and sent out – of which TV is the most powerful medium – the lure of the commercials within the belly of this heavily lopsided consumerism bent world. The message; to buy more, purchase this or that and you’ll be happy. The message is laden with competition, to strive to be as cool as your peers.

Television and film/video is such a powerful medium: images fused with music to hit the emotional chords. The messages could be: the world is a wonderful place and we are in this together… kind and loving people here to help you and guide you… this world is awesome with all of its creatures and look at how happy and joyful you can be through the simplest activities. Well, yes, these messages are out there, and yes, one can turn off the television and electronic devices. Yet instead, the predominant messages coming from the TV is, if you don’t have this, or own that, you are ‘left out’ and socially bankrupt. If you don’t get in with the action and buy this or have this, you won’t get the attention you want and you won’t be able to pretend to fabricate this gleaming and glittering reality. If you are unattractive or weak or not in the ‘in crowd’, these commercial messages will be even more venomously received with anger and hatred.

That was my response looking at the commercials after listening to Obama’s words to the nation after yet another massacre. For the most part, the perpetrators of mass school killings are not doing it out of racism or inequality – they are typically caucasian males who randomly shoot without much care of the target. The killings seem to be rage from people who feel outcast within their own groups/schools/communities who see reality and their prospects as bleak.

Add the easy accessibility of guns to the equation and it gives the people with the anger, emotional rage, chemical imbalance or a history of being victims of torment and abuse the ability to easily carry out their impulsive or well-thought-out plans of (suicide / homicide ) with ease.

Buy what thou hast no need of

So I’m saying that this stems from the dis ease of the messages of rampant consumerism infiltrating our culture. It’s the slickness of the mirage that advertisers create for the companies who wish to sell their merchandise, at any cost. Okay, i’ve said enough, or not enough. Western culture is so bent on profit and short-term, short-sighted goals – at the risk of genuine human happiness and the welfare of all the different creatures that share our planet – that both the haves and the have-nots, have anxiety; the former, because of the threat of it being taken away, the latter, because of the material things dangling before them, which they can’t have.

 

Just a theory about a culture that keeps getting further and further away from the real, simple joys in life, enjoyment through sharing company with oneself, with others and with the natural world around them.

better place DaykEgner Mamasweed Kurci and Kay Degner

Go out into Nature and get Lost, without anything

Certainly this epidemic can not be reduced to blaming it on capitalistic commercialism. What’s the remedy? Go out into nature, without any electronic gadgets or stuff, and get lost.

Carol Keiter horse NYC Climate March ’14

Propose a “Humanity Without Borders” Commission made of Collaborative countries to Create Jobs & Place Refugees Worldwide into 1. Renewable Energy Production Operations 2. Affordable Elderly Care Positions

Propose a “Humanity Without Borders” Commission made of Collaborative countries to Create Jobs>Place Refugees Worldwide into 1. Renewable Energy Production Operations (Wind, Solar, Wave, Geothermal) 2. Affordable Elderly Care Positions

renewable energy wordcloud

Given: there are as many opinions as there are fingerprints. Some are more molded into particular alignments with a given fraternity, community, language group or identification with a particular religious, political or economic regime. I’ve listened to a number of different opinions in the last 10 days, all pretty educated ones; ranging from the idealistic to the pragmatic. Each provide lessons.

helping hands elderly care

I think that the whole world needs to make some radical, revolutionary changes in response to all of the things happening right now. There is no choice to maintain the status quo of how things are. People need to step out of their comfort zones and into more proactive than reactive stances. Step out of their insular communities and look and act with a larger incentive; that of recapturing a sense that there is more to life than merely the exchange rate and a particular point of view. What is happening now with the climate, the pollution, the higher levels of economic and racial inequality and the dissemination of species and the mass exodus of peoples from lands all over the world due to economic or political crisis, is unprecedented. And that this flow of migration away from the regions with such bleak circumstances is in many ways connected to and because of what is happening or produced and exported – directly or indirectly – from other more powerful nations of the world. This exodus from lower altitude lying countries, along with Carbon Dioxide levels, will only rise, unless we do something about it.

heart wordcloud ederly care

Everyone is going to have to face this challenge. A challenge beyond aeons of fraternal arguing, religious opposition, power mongering and basing everything on the GDP and finance. Man’s energy choices have resulted in the degradation of the earth and all of its creatures, along with more severe extreme weather patterns. And now, amalgamating into a flood of people from their bleak circumstances. The additional challenge is a growing aging population that also deserve the respect and dignity of having their needs met.

I propose “Humanity Without Borders“

I say, create the room and motive to solve several crises with the same goal; to relocate people by establishing a Humanity Without Borders board made up of dozens of different membership countries. Their mission: to relocate refugees with dignity, and placement into work.

The world has been watching a flood of refugees from all over the world; central American towards their Northern neighbors, Syria, North, East and Central Africans into Europe, lured by smugglers, who like drug dealers, are mostly intent on making a profit, by any means possible. We’ve been watching as people have been herded into horrific conditions and treated with anger, fright and contempt.

This is something that is bigger than any one nation can handle, and once again, perhaps created because of these foreign lands that they are fleeing towards, indirectly from the financial model and directly because of the CO2 levels rising, affecting the weather patterns to such an extreme that their resources are depleting as the unrest and political turmoil rises. These small-time smugglers are profiteering on delivering people out of their sordid environments as if they’re fugitives.

Yet we could construct something to solve the tensions, perhaps even slow down the desire to abandon their own countries, by creating a global panel representative of a host of different ethnicities and governments worldwide, to join in this emergent “Humanity Without Borders” mission: to place refugees worldwide into working towards the production of renewable energy plants worldwide, and the service of the elderly in the growing populations of elderly and declining birthrates in several nations of the Western World including the USA and Germany as well as Japan and China in the Eastern Hemisphere, to be trained in healthcare.

This would be creating jobs and placing people into sustainable economic conditions, while helping with the crushing demand of restructuring our infrastucture towards renewable and clean energy to curb the pollution and destructive dirty energy practices of oil and coal, and fulfill the need for human assistance to elderly. Empowerment, a growth in quality of life, a renewal of the environment and a cross-generational reach to honor the dignity of life into old age, would be just some of the positive repercussions of this placement.

Perhaps, a mass transformation of building towards renewable and ecologically sustainable production and practices, would dramatically improve the quality of well, everything.

jobs 2012 renewable energy

There is no shortage of jobs! There is a shortage of the means of funding a complete restructuring of the industries as we know them. But there are examples of great ingenuity and success stories of renewable energy everywhere.

There is no shortage of money! Just look at the amount of campaign money in the United States presidential race. A Choice of Billionaires. There are two categories in demand globally in goods and services: 1. restructuring energy production to put large scale renewable energy systems in place – solar, wind, geothermal, wave, etc. and 2. the service of care, particularly for aging populations in the US, Japan, China etc,

My idea to curtail and meet the worldwide refugee challenge: the creation of a non-denominational, non-politically or religiously aligned panel of members of the world community Humanity Without Borders, based at the UN Headquarters for example.

It can be done. China has exemplified achieving massive construction in an astoundingly short period of time. Though clearly not without experiencing the fallout of industrialization, they have also created some quite green enterprises.

This is my proposal, and if you want to read further, here’s how I arrived at this idea, what influenced me.

green planet renewable energy

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

I listened to Annie Leonard’s Story of Solutions; her response to our Western consumer driven capitalistic mode. I’ve listened to the historian and political economist Gar Alperovitz talk of the growing trends that point to the systemic failures of the current model of Capitalism. His book discusses decentralizing alternatives, leading to the democratization of wealth and ownership. “If you don’t like capitalism or state socialism, what do you want?” He talks of systemic change nurturing principles of Democracy, Ownership, Community and Ecological Sustainability; a Pluralist Commonwealth.

I’ve listened to the Pope and read Daily Kos : excerpts of The Popes Encyclical. Time magazine September 28, 2015 issue with Bernie Sanders on the cover, has an article about the Pope by Elizabeth Dias, “The New Roman Empire”, http://time.com in which she describes his impact in the world. “The Pope’s activism will be put to the test on his visit to the U.S.…seen by many as a wellspring of some of the global ills he has attacked – corporate greed, colonial exploitation, economic inequality – and his pronouncements on everything from climate change to immigration…His climate encyclical scope was wide: it talked about everything from individuals’ air-conditioning use to how environmental degradation is causing poverty and migration…calling for a bold cultural revolution, for example, Francis said the rich and powerful were pushing a model of development based on fossil-fuel consumption that ended up hurting the poor.”

I’ve also learned of the Band of Sisters, the Universe Story & Ecotheology, a transformative view of Catholic priests which is becoming a movement, identifying the supremacy of nature and our place in it as ecotheology. Wherein the quality of life is based on our spiritual relationship to the Earth, as opposed to being economically based.

I listened to my brother in law, Graeam Cohen, a well learned British businessman and historian with knowledge and understanding of the conflicts occurring presently between different religious groups in Europe and the Middle East as well as an historic understanding of the roots of the world as it is today. His pragmatic understanding of the status quo, is that the hegemonies of the world are run through economics and power/money and military might. He points out that the history of western civilization stems back to the Greeks and Romans, in which the military was an irrevocable part of the larger scheme of rule and control. Today, corporations as any other business enterprises are ultimately protected under the sovereignty of the land in which they are incorporated. Corporations don’t have military to protect themselves, they have lobbyists, as do every other group.

He spoke casually of the fallouts of an occasional polluted stream or earth quake as being perhaps burdensome, but inevitable natural consequences of moving ahead with the production of the economic machine, which must, must keep producing and making a profit. This is measuring the world’s teetering economic balance with the stick of the GDP. Easier said, when you aren’t living directly next to a petroleum or coal based industry that borders your back yard. I can understand his points, and don’t doubt that they are exceedingly accurate in capturing what most businessmen would also be inclined to view as what is of utmost importance: economic strength, military might which protects the hegemony in a world which is heavily dependent on finance. A world of business that mostly responds to the urgency of making a profit and often with short-sighted, short-term goals and not much of an inspiration to think beyond that model.

Yet I believe, as the speakers at the New Economy forum and https://digesthis.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/economist-john-maynard-keynes-vision-of-the-wto/, that there are indeed alternatives.

What if, everyone would grow gardens in their back yards, along with town, community and neighborhood gardens. What if fruit and nut trees were planted everywhere – with plants and crops suitable climatically and geographically to that region – with the surplus going directly back into the community? what if a massive infrastructure for recycling, waste, water run-off and transportation overhauls were created > with the intention to create cleaner, safer, less polluted, ecologically sustainable and more attractive communities. What if there was an overhaul in creating green transportation alternatives; bike lanes, bicycles, hydrogen cell/solar/electric/salt water powered automobiles, maglev high speed train lines, clean and energy efficient interregional train systems.

And that a new expedient United Nations driven unilaterally representative group help to expedite the strategic placement of people all over the world.
What if it actually could be done?

Systemic Failure of Consumer-driven Corporate Capitalism births a New Economy

“This economic revolution isn’t being consciously driven, yet, however it’s an option that could prevail”, says Gar Alperovitz. It is spawning and evolving from the discontent and pains that our current system and its failures and lack of alternatives, is giving birth to. We’re at the pre-history, of something quite historic!

I sat among the choir. A note about Annie Leonard speaking in Baltimore, an environmental activist whose Story of Stuff first sparked my attention, arrived in my inbox. We attended the “People and Planet First” IPS conference to educate ourselves, exchange information and spread the word. It was hosted at the University of Baltimore, September 19th, 2015. The final session was moderated by ‘Institute for Policy Studies’ Director, John Cavanagh.

The conference looked at our current challenges from a wider perspective; seeing the various systemic problems ensuing from our current corporate capitalism model, as quite interdependent. The environmental problems of mass extinction, pollution and rising carbon dioxide levels along with the social problems of inequality and injustice, are all tied to the current economic model; which maintains and concentrates its wealth by funneling it back to the source (the 1%), instead of redistributing wealth and power (and empowerment) among the citizens and the community. And spoke of an emerging business model from community gardens, composting, water run-off and waste management to setting up local business alliances, local banks, farmer cooperatives and student civic actions that join the local alliances to promote investments in local businesses.

Annie Leonard, US Greenpeace director of ‘Story of Stuff’ fame, presented her more recent informational video “Story of Solutions”. It points to the fact that we need to completely step out of what is driving the capitalism machine of quantity, to an entirely different game which seeks quality of life – equality and freedom for people and quality of life for all creation. A model beyond merely consumption.

Historian and political economist Gar Alperovitz presented his ideas amassed in the preparation for his latest book, “What Then Must We Do by Gar Alperovitz?”, talking of alternatives to Corporate Capitalism and Socialism, as clearly the American empire is in decay. On almost every indicator, there’s a deeper trend over the past decades which reveals that there’s a systemic crisis in the United States. The systemic design that we’ve lived with for a long time, in which corporations control the capital, reveal that the surplus is not being returned to benefit the communities and the people, but siphoned off to make the 1% who are the owners, more and more wealthy. This trend of increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, of increasing inequality, increasing sickness within populations due to pollutants, decreasing prosperity among the 99%.

Corporate Capitalism and the American Empire as we know it, is giving birth to something new, which innovative Americans are creating all over the country. Gar Alperovitz mentions that this certainly isn’t anything the media is covering. In fact, many don’t believe that alternatives exist, until they see examples of what other groups and communities have accomplished. “Often we don’t know what our neighbors are doing”, says Gar. “Systems typically revolve around ‘who has control of the wealth’. The rule of royalty in the feudalism of the middle ages, in the present day manifests itself as ‘Corporate Capitalism’, of which the extreme is fascism, control by authoritarian rule.”

Sometimes noisily, but often times quietly, communities around the country – of which Maryland is an example of being ahead of the wave – are transforming our culture by decentralizing ownership. By democratizing the wealth through becoming owners of their own goods and services, they are able to maintain a number of things; circulating surplus back into their own operations and communities (rather than it being syphoned off to the 1%), empowering themselves, making conscious decisions to ensure that all aspects of operations have the lightest ecological footprint possible and generating freedom through participation in ownership and production and wealth.

We currently have a system of enormous waste, in which we continue to manufacture and create more stuff, because that is a NEED embedded in capitalism. Capitalism must produce more, to ensure profit.

Examples of alternatives are in cooperative enterprises, worker-owned companies, credit unions, 25% of American electricity is socialist in structure, social enterprises like CREDO (using profits for social and political purposes), neighborhood corporations, land-trusts that are socialized (to control land inflation and gentrification).

Following examples of success such as Mondragón in the Basque region of Spain. Mondragon Corporation networked democratized ownership where capital is being decentralized to empower and enrich the communities by circulating surplus back into local communities. Consciously making decisions to connect to all other suppliers and parts connected to the whole system, with conscientious efforts to localize and work within a ‘green’ system. It is just the beginning.

I apologize for any grammatical errors or gaps in information, however I must now leave to hitch to Washington D.C. to attend the People for Climate Justice Climate Rally in Washington D.C., coinciding with Pope Francis’ delivering his tenets of wisdom to the White House.

Posting a ‘job/home/community relocation’ info ad for myself!

I, Carol Keiter, blogger, writer, musician, composer, environmental and nature enthusiast and animal activist need to relocate within weeks. I need to hone into> the right location, community and sources for work that will fulfill the job description which has evolved, as I’ve been writing this!

I realize that my job description is along the lines of broadcast journalism. The fact that I have a curiosity about many many subjects, the desire to travel and use my language skills, love of researching information, working with all sorts of digital media, interacting with people of myriad backgrounds and observing natural environments, and an interest in science and technology, with a joy in extracting and compiling information and then sharing it.

I am in search of a place to relocate, within not 6 months, but several weeks, as a start! My preference is to be based in a European city, where I can further develop and utilize my language skills (French, German, Spanish or Italian); where I can work together with a team making productions similar to what I’ve described as well as independently getting stories.

Carol Keiter the blogger in New York city attending a Make Music New York event at Times Square presented by Yoko Ono

I’d like to focus on success stories about individual people and communities who have made a difference through their recognition and implementation of adopting better practices to safeguard their own environments and that of the animal habitats within their area. With a focus on the need to live interdependently and respectfully with other species; as the human species can act as caretakers of the planet and all creatures to celebrate this incredible biodiversity, not exploit it.

Within my challenge is the need to find housing, art or music cooperatives, live/work exchanges or just that perfect job I describe that will enable me to continue to do what I do best; observing, asking questions, writing and taking digital photos and sharing stories.

My goal > continuing along the lines of using my laptop computer for writing, photography, photoshop, sound recording, illustration (portrait art) and musical instrument skills (bass guitar and piano) & composition skills, and language skills to do work that involves > researching, compiling and exchanging information along the lines of technical/environmentally sustainable practices/renewable energy alternatives/habitat awareness and support for various species. All of this is relevant to the world’s current urgent need to organize campaigns to inform communities and support actions that employ and implement renewable energy systems in communities and DIY projects, awareness of how one’s own diet, transportation habits and actions reflect on the larger picture, the need for ocean cleanup, the need to wean ourselves from coal and oil and petroleum based energy resources and products to the awareness of animal rights and habitat preservation.

I wish to work with a team sharing enlightening information about what community success stories and how other communities could adopt similar practices and behaviors.

I wish to base myself in preferably a European metropolitan center to work with groups along these lines – where I can also develop and use my language skills, creativity, joy of interacting with divers peoples and groups – and a significant or equivalent amount of time traveling to areas which I wish to document and research> ideas and success stories revealing positive alternatives that can be adopted.

healthier living environments
habitat preservation
best practices as far as what types of foods one is consuming and how this affects the environment
better technological infrastructures for transportation that consider other species
healthier attitudes and respect of other species in general
infrastructure to provide mutually beneficial habitats for humans and animals and all of the interdependent life on the planet
the transition of infrastructures from coal and oil industries to the implementation of jobs supporting renewable energies; solar, wind, wave, biomass
encouraging new approaches to DIY technology to improve your own communities’ means of adapting and implementing all sorts of earth-friendly technologies for energy, healthy living and as stewards of all of the other species on the planet

Does anyone have any suggestions or leads? Along the lines of Al Jazeera America’s ‘Techknow’, National Geographic and a plethora of other environmental organizations from NRDC to Greenpeace.

Bottom line: I need to make a choice of where to relocate within weeks, and am looking for leads, ideas, groups to work with and a place to land.

Any offers or advice? I have no income or savings. Hence, sending this first ‘job/home-base search letter’ out there so that more ideas may spring up regarding what part of the world to go to?

My skills and passions are for the most part, besides motion and travel – a.k.a ‘nomadbeatz’ – as an environmental activist/researcher/journalist/portrait artist/illustrator/musician/composer/teacher/lecturer. I could be persuaded to dip towards any to these: writing, illustration, music composition for film and screenwriting. Yep, they are all over the place, yet they all interconnect.

I am physically, mentally/emotionally and spiritually fit, resilient and strong. Conversant in French, German and Spanish in addition to my native English.

The politics of fear and consent through silence and non-action, are not part of my playbook.

We can do it, if we put our minds and hearts together and sing and dance as we work.

résumé/portfolio:
https://carolkeiter.wordpress.com/2010/12/24/curriculum-vitae-portfolio
https://carolkeiter.wordpress.com/2010/11/23/parcel-of-my-portfolio

music:
http://www.myspace.com/nomadbeatz
http://www.reverbnation.com/nomadbeatz

ebook:
https://carolkeiter.wordpress.com/2013/05/23/final-metamorphosis-of-the-ebook-trailer-for-adora-vitali-a-spin-on-the-matter-of-motion/
http://spinonmatter.carbonmade.com/projects/4800092#1

social networks:
http://www.facebook.com/carol.keiter
http://carolkeiter.tumblr.com
http://www.twitter.com/carolkeiter
http://www.couchsurfing.org/people/carol_keiter
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/carol-keiter/7/124/b63

Hope walks through the fire and faith leaps over it.

Donations towards Carol Keiter’s writing, eBook, music composition, photography & illustrations are graciously accepted!

Carol Keiter the blogger with camera in hand at MMNY-MakeMusicNewYork

Carol Keiter the blogger in New York city attending a Make Music New York event at Times Square presented by Yoko Ono

nYc Mid Summer Hitchabout Bliss | Sleepless in New York | The Strangers Project

highline_graffiti_einstein

With a new impetus to travel, I worked hard for the week – much of my tasks involved with proactively preparing for when my current residence, the family home where I grew up, will be sold. And as I’m not ready to depart just yet, I decided that a weekend adventure in New York city would fulfill that desire.

I decided to make the plunge.

highline_graffiti_plunge

This title could also be Sleepless In New York🙂

NYC hitching sign

I went on two of these hitchabouts within two weeks of each other. The first was on the 21st of June, to celebrate the summer solstice with the Make Music New York.

Here’s a flickr link to the pics from this trip. The pictures pretty much describe most of my journey, with the exception of dancing the first night in the Meat Packing district!

flickr link to the nYc July hitchabout

building juxtapostion

As New York is unlike most other places in America, one visits the entire world as people wander by in their full traditional wear from whatever culture, especially the older generation. One can see saris of India, elegant midwestern wear in burkas, Central and South American passengers on the streets along with various African cultures passing you in turbans along with Jamaican…basically you name it, you will see people from all over the world. I’m merely talking about Manhattan. Of the five boroughs, I know that Queens has one of the most dense concentrations of people living in the same congested area, resulting in the highest concentration of divers languages in one area, in the world.

 

My best discovery of the last hitch was the the High Line, which is much more maturely grown with its extravagance of wild flowers than the wiki-link description pic reveals, as then it was just being born. It is now one of my favorite getaways for silence and nature and a healthy sprinkle of people from all over the world who are also visiting these lovely gardens imbedded into the former overhead railway. This former railway carried trains to transport meat and finished products back and forth to the Meat Packing district.

highline_looking_south_midtown_plexiglass_stadium

 

 

highline_flowers_bees

highline water walkway

 

 

 

Colin Huggins playing the grande piano in Washington Sq. Park NYC

Colin Huggins playing the grand piano in Washington Square Park

The other highlights of this trip both took place in Washington Square park. A surprise classical piano recital played on a grande piano that Colin Huggins rolled up and played.

washington_sq_pk_the_strangers_project_stories

Another fun discovery was the Strangers Project, an interactive event in the park where people came to read other peoples’ stories, and were invited to share their own.

the Strangers Project on Facebook whats your story

the Strangers Project whats your story

what’s your story? the strangers project

Here are a few stories !-)

washington_sq_pk_the_strangers_project_story_dont_forget

the Strangers Project story How things are supposed to work

the stranger project my story in nyc

 

On the way back, I made my way to my town square in three rides. An Egyptian driver taking his rider through the tunnel to New Jersey, picked me up because she asked him to. His attitude towards me changed abruptly once she left the car; he was now a bit hostile and asking me for a faire. However he calmed by the time we talked a bit and took me next to the road where many cars could head onto the route I intended to take. The next was a man born in the Dominican Republic, whose parents moved to the Bronx when he was ten. He claimed that there’s way too much corruption there and high presence of gangs. That this transformation has been taking place as a result of the economic fallout, with a high percentage increase compared to what the United States population has taken. These poorer countries feel the hit ten fold. He brought me to within feet of the border of Pennsylvania from New Jersey. There I discovered two gas stations across the street from one another, with both of the gas station attendants barely English literate young me from the Ukraine. I sort of drifted back and forth investigating rides from both. One of the men was all smiles and brightness. The other looked continually sour and preoccupied. I thought he was going to ask me to leave, then when he finally said something to me, it was to complain that people in New Jersey and Pennsylvania don’t tip. I offered to make him a sign, and with time on my hands, did so. I showed him the sketch and said I could make a substantially larger one with my marker on cardboard.

Tips R Welcome

After that, the few times that I suggested holding up the sign, he waived his finger gravely, no no, his boss definitely did not like the idea of having a sign encouraging tips!

I was about to pack it up for the night, mean walking around to investigate the area, when after getting no response from the two cars at this station, I looked at the less busy one across the divided road, and saw two cars there as well. I was 90 miles from home and it was dark for a while now. I suddenly noticed cars at the gas station across the street and immediately started walking there carrying my pack. I then started to run with a bit of an urgency. I arrived there just as the customer had paid, his window was open. I approached the driver sitting in the car about to leave holding up my

Hershey sign

as I spoke to him asking if he happens to be going towards Hershey, and he answered, “As a matter of fact, I am.” The conversation with him now started to pull together what the previous conversation with the Dominican Republic man had started to hint at; economic injustice causing most of the problems of the world today. Captivated, I listened as my young driver quite articulately expressed: ‘that the current world problems of injustice and inequality and the subsequent violence and disharmony are all a fall-out of the fact that as the economic powers that be – corporations which are growing larger – grow more wealthy and dismantle and crush mom-and-pop stores around the country (world) have the effect of decreasing the circulation of capital, which normally would take place as more and more people contribute their business and flow of money. These large corporations have the tendency to keep getting richer, as they also suck the money out of the populations. And the years of growing phat monopolies and outsourcing have basically ‘desertified’ the home grown economies.

Yep, well, there it is in a nutshell>DIVEST< from petrochemical, chemical, pharmaceutical, dirty industries, from the Starbucks, Walmart, CostCo and all of these huge business chains that are gobbling up all of our local businesses.🙂

I had my good luck charm with me, which seems to have done me well.

elephant_necklace_gift_from vendor in Berlin

Hope walks through the fire and faith leaps over it.

carol_the_blogger_safe_n_sound

Donations towards Carol Keiter’s writing, eBook, music composition, photography & illustrations are graciously accepted!

Thanks!

What Humans Currently Do | Excerpt from “The Universe Story”

Our Solar System arose 4.5 Billion years ago. The Earth has evolved – through a series of transformations – to even enable life to form.

From the beginning, as our universe continues to evolve in its cosmogenesis, intelligent intent is present – at all levels > towards differentiation, autopoiesis and communion.

NASA image Cygnus Loop Supernova Stellar Explosion 15,000 years ago

 

Excerpts from the authors

Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry of “The Universe Story”

Ecological Buddhism – A Buddhist Response to Global Warming

Presently, the human race enters the The Ecozoic Era.

Brian Swimme is one of the main people with whom to study, to understand the cosmological shift necessary to a new cosmology.

 

 

“As the natural world recedes in its diversity and abundance, so the human finds itself impoverished in its economic resources, its imaginative powers, its human sensitivities and in significant aspects of its intellectual intuitions.”

Davastation of a Rainforest

 

Here’s a link to the footage of Forest Heroes from a drone of the devastation of a rainforest: Astra’s forest destruction in Indonesia.

 

“The pathos is that we are presently deliberately terminating the most awesome splendor that the planet has yet attained. We are extinguishing the rainforests, the most luxuriant life system of the entire planet, at the rate of an acre each second of each day. Each year we are destroying a rainforest area the size of Oklahoma.

Throughout the planet we are not only extinguishing present forms of life, yet also eliminating the very conditions for the renewal of life in some of its more elaborate forms.

We have moved from such evils as suicide, homicide, and genocide, to biocide and geocide, the killing of the life systems of the planet and the severe degradation if not the killing of the planet itself. We have moved from simple physical assault on the planet, to disturbance of the chemical balance of the planet through our petrochemical industries, to questionable manipulation of the genetic constitution of the living being of the planet by our genetic engineering, to the radioactive wasting of the planet through our nuclear industries.”

Bird sanctuary at Gulf Petrochemicals Industries Co.

 

Ironically, this image of a bird sanctuary at Gulf Petrochemicals Industries Co., is courtesy of the president of the Petro company. A public relations blog on how hunky dory everything is, with the company sitting on top of a fragile ecosystem.

 

 

“That human well-being could be achieved by diminishing the well being of the Earth, that a rising Gross Domestic Product could ignore the declining Gross Earth Product, is the basic flaw in the Wonderland Myth.”

momgoesgreen.com:my-thoughts-on-the-gulf-oil-spill

 

 

“These centuries of “progress” are now ending with increasing stress for the human is final evidence that;

what humans do to the outer world they do to their own interior world.

 

! Next Blog ¡ What we humans need to do in our emerging Echoic Era, to allow the paradigm shift in our conscious awareness to emerge.

We are Earth> Occupy the Planet!

Happiness & Healing Oneself | Your Choice of Mind & Heart

It’s another one of those times when I’ve come across a subject that I feel is of such import that I post it on both blogs simultaneously.

In the last days I read and viewed this information, which is one small extract of many peoples experiences of either making themselves ill or healing themselves, through their own attitude and what they anticipate. If you think that someone is going to react in a certain way or something is going to happen in the way that you expect, good or bad, typically, because this is the window you’re looking through and the way that you approach the situation, it more than likely will.

http://truththeory.com/2014/04/27/is-there-scientific-proof-we-can-heal-ourselves/

Here is the youtube video of Lissa Rankin, MD’s TED talk – a presentation of the results of her research. YES, she researched and found her proof. Rankin addressed in her TED talk a group of health care professionals talking about how much their caring intention influences the health and healing of their patients.

happiness shot holding up arms Lissa Rankin talk

I’ve written plenty of times about the subject of happiness.

https://digesthis.wordpress.com/2013/02/28/pursuit-of-happiness-the-happy-movie-my-stroke-of-insight/ The giggling Guru and the insights of the writer’s book, “My Stroke of Happiness”.

https://carolkeiter.wordpress.com/2014/12/22/new-year-resolutions-happiness-through-action-one-mini-habit-at-a-time/ Talking about the satisfaction of accomplishing things through adopting mini habits that are manageable.

https://carolkeiter.wordpress.com/2013/10/01/the-science-of-happiness-an-experiment-in-gratitude-soulpancake-upworthy-things-that-matter/ about the importance of gratitude.

laughing buddha

…and a few times about healing…

https://digesthis.wordpress.com/2014/12/13/marijuana-out-of-the-closet-the-cannabis-cure-cbd-tincture/ The Cannabis Cure, by Charlie Bayliss and Amelia Powers “The Powers of the Mind” regarding her ability to overcome a brain tumor not with chemotherapy (which hadn’t been working) but through the decision to employ optimism, dancing and CBD tinctures – extracted from marijuana.

There may be all sorts of incidences that occur throughout the day which may trigger a stress response. Regardless of the source of the stress, our body releases stress hormones such as cortisol and epinephrine. The body responds to stress by producing hormones that are ingrained into the ‘fight or flight’ response which is genetically built-in, from the times when humans actually did have to be prepared to promptly face or flee a threat such as a wild animal or severe weather condition. Yet, it is us who decide how to respond emotionally to interpret a situation as something inducing stress; a perception of monetary, marital, social problems, work conflicts, situational discomforts or environmental hazards etc. Our body doesn’t distinguish between the source of our stress, it simply responds to our emotional response by chemically producing hormones to interpret our emotional reaction.

You basically do have a choice in how you respond to circumstances.

The point is to actively pursue experiences that lead to feeling happier and to alleviate the stress. Making a conscious choice to allow oneself to relax, enjoy one’s environment, to enjoy simple things, engage in activities like meditation and other practices that facilitate a deeper conscious breathing, physical exercise, participating in experiences that engage with nature, eating healthy foods, spending time in the company of positive people and interacting with all sorts of animals; therapy dogs specifically elicit happy hormones because of their unconditionally loving nature. Make a point of acknowledging with gratitude what you appreciate, attune to all of the different wonderful life forms (animals and plants in our world) that are here around you, and recognize that by participating in creative activities and doing tasks that involve achieving little goals, all lead to developing more insights and a sense of accomplishment. All of these different activities that are coming through the heart, instead of through the head, will lead to the release of hormones such as dopamine, oxytocin and serotonin, which the body produces in association with feelings of happiness and contentment and a sense of well-being. Laugh! Go out and play!

Yes, it’s a choice.

nYc hitchabout | City of Continuous Interactive Creativity

It’s not just my current economic situation that propels me to hitch, when I wish to visit a place without being prohibited by my lack of disposable income. It’s the fact that I learn things through the people I get rides with, who more often than not, are people whom I wouldn’t otherwise come into contact with and learn about the area that in some cases, is their hood. I had a nice nYc hitchabout visit to a city which always promises and delivers lots of energy and movement. I happened upon several open air festivals and demonstrations that reveal the creativity and spirit of involvement that all of the different cultures of people congealing in one city demonstrate. Here’s the flickr link to the pictures I took in progression.

New York City flickr link to pics

For a 2.5 hour trip by car, I received three rides to arrive in NY, and three to return home. Each a fairly quick connection; after having used google maps and directions to map out my route. The first gift upon the last ride, was with a man from Guiana, who brought me that last stretch right into Queens, where he introduced me to some local flavor on that Friday evening. A local bar filled with music and laughter of people, mostly men, from Guiana, Trinidad and Jamaica. I’d always heard of the fact that the borough of Queens in Manhattan has the highest concentration of languages of any place in the world, due to the fact that there’s a dense convergence of people of different cultures from all over the world living there.

I discovered barriers set up in the East Village for a Dance Parade which would happen later that day, in which various different cultures participated.

Dance Parade nYc Village

This was passing from the West Village to the East Village by another event taking place, a Secret Walls Street Art competition at Cooper Sq. in Manhattan. The Secret Walls xnYc is part of the L.I.S.A. project | Little Italy Street Art

Secret Walls Graffiti L.I.S.A project

Carol Keiter the bloggers contribution to the Wall

Two Team Graffiti competition

Graffiti competition Secret Walls L.I.S.A. project Little Italy Street Art

It just so happened that next to the Graffiti competition and interactive for the public to contribute to, were a bunch of chairs set up for people to take their ride, also an interactive event.

NYC X Design chairs at Cooper Union Sq.

Interactive chairs NYC X Design

NYC X Design interactive chairs

The following day I happened upon an AIDS walkathon in Central Park, where I happened upon some live music there to perform for the event with drummers and dancers. Black & Gold Marching Elite band.

AIDS Walk Central Park NYC

Approaching AIDS Walk Central Park NYC

Black & Gold Marching Elite band

That was after my friends who I had gone to meet up with and visit in the first place informed me of how fantastic the current Chinese Textile and Design exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art – “Through the Looking Glass” is. When they informed me that one can “Pay What You Can” to enter, I was sold on going there to investigate. The exhibit was indeed splendid with its visual, texture and sound multimedia; beautifully created by the curators in which they use frames of metal and glass to reflect even more dramatically the color and intricate designs of traditional Chinese Royal Robes through the centuries juxtaposed next to modern Western designers works of this last century. One of the friendly workers in the museum suggested that I check out the roof top, which I’m glad I did, after trekking to the other end of the museum to catch the elevator up. There were lots of tourists, in fact, I heard so much French from passersby as I walked the streets of Manhattan that I approached one family and asked them. I told them that I’m hearing sooooo much French among people in the streets, do you live here? what is going on? They mentioned smiling that they’re on vacation, as is and eighth of the population of France🙂 I also got to practice my German, taking a photograph of a family group on the MET rooftop, who were surprised and pretty stoked when I spoke to them in colloquial German, explaining that I’d lived in Berlin. Encountering all of the different cultures of people from around the world is certainly what makes New York so dynamic and engaging.

Through the Looking Glass Chinese Textile and Design exhibit MET Metropolitan Museum of Art

Through the Looking Glass Chinese Textile and Design exhibit MET Metropolitan Museum of Art

After happening upon the demonstration after the Museum following discovering a mid-town street fair in the process of being set up, I made my way down to SoHo, to Canal street, where there was already a solid wall of cars on Sunday late afternoon inching their way towards the Holland Tunnel to exit the city going West. There, after seeing mostly New Jersey license plates, yet with my sign that said on one side Route # 78 and the other PA Pennsylvania, a car of a Mother and her two daughters were driving back from there to a town within 17 miles of where I’m presently residing in PA. The one daughter just celebrated her Associates degree of Art at the Pratt Institute of Art. Because of the recent commuter train wreck in Philadelphia, there were no trains, and the airlines’ gracious response was to jack up the fairs 200% or so.

It was a wonderful trip visiting my Native New Mexico family of friends, a Mother and her two daughters, Dana, Aria and Colette whom I know from Taos, New Mexico when I worked for Dana at ‘Caffe Tazza’. There meeting in NY is what brought me to visit the city in the first place, while the three converged there for the weekend.

Dana and her daughters Aria and Colette Manhattan

I was fortunate to join them and their friends for a meal at a Ukrainian and Polish restaurant Veselka in the East Village, after which we went to an Italian place for coffee and desert.

carol_aria_dana_colette_caroline_vera_nyc_2015_2

NPR Part 4 on Identity | Pico Iyer’s TED talk: “Where do you call home?”

Today I happened to turn on (NPR) National Public Radio, to hear Part 4 of the TED Radio Hour episodes on Identity, of which I knew nothing about.

TED Technology Entertainment Design Ideas worth spreading

This one featuring Pico Iyer’s TED talk about his perspective of “where one calls home”. It certainly grabbed my attention, the topic alone, since I’ve lived in quite a number of different places, among different communities in several countries. This particular presentation by the writer Pico Iyer, regarding “what do you call home?” is quite intriguing because of the way in which he eloquently describes his intimate understanding of the situation of having no particular identification with any one place.

He realizes at one point after living in numerous countries and having had his parent’s home burn down, that “My home would have to be whatever I carry around inside me.”

He calls it a terrific liberation in fact, since he speaks of how his grandparents grew up in a community, in which their whole sense of home, community and enmity, was assigned to them at birth. They didn’t have much chance of stepping outside of this.

Pico Iyer’s TEDTalk on Identity

Nowadays, some of use can choose our home, create our sense of community and fashion our sense of self, by stepping beyond the black and white divisions of our grandparent’s age.

The number of people living in countries other than their own, is currently 220 million.

It is one thing to have ‘moved around a lot, and quite another, when one is fleeing their country – which is happening at alarming rates these days, with political refugees seeking asylum from the violence in their homelands. Yet, listening to Pico’s smiling voice articulate examples of people who are by birth, of two different ethnic backgrounds; living in a third country that is neither of their parent’s homeland, ads an additional subtle twist.

Perhaps this talk will be soothing to anyone who hears it, to reassure us all that home is what one carries within ourselves.

Iyer’s final statement: “Home is not where I sleep, but where I stand“.

Introduction to my book “Adora & Vitali: A Spin on the Matter of Motion”

Introduction

http://spinonmatter.carbonmade.com/projects/4800092#1

Though this tale is fiction, the book is woven throughout with supporting factual theories, that emerge as the story evolves. This non-fiction evidence is laced with science; biology, geology, cosmology and physics, which substantiates how this theoretical world can exist. The scientific basis of this book with its substantial bibliography to allow the reader for further exploration of the topic, is proof of how this world which the characters encounter, can exist at all. I invite you on this intellectual and spiritual adventure.

Adora & Vitali: A Spin on the Matter of Motion trailer thumbnails

As the writers of “The Universe Story” Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry indicate. All of the energy of the entire universe today was present in the initial Flaring Forth. And though no carbon-based life or stabilized forms of matter that we see today could have lasted for even a fraction of an instant during this, it was the birth of time and space, from which all creation is intricately related.

The authors mention the evolution of the human species up to the present, stating in their prologue: “The dominant entity that emerged was not any particular nation-state but the multi-national corporation. These new institutions directed vast scientific, technological, financial and bureaucratic powers toward controlling Earth processes for the benefit of the human economy. By the end of the twentieth century, the destruction left by the wars between nations was dwarfed in significance by the destruction of the natural systems by industrial plunder. In geological terms, human activities in the twentieth century ended the sixty-seven-million-year venture called the Cenozoic era. … Th future of Earth’s community rests in significant ways upon the decisions to be made by the humans who have inserted themselves so deeply into even the genetic codes of Earth’s process. The future will be worked out in the tensions between those committed to the Technozoic, a future of increased exploitation of Earth as resource, all for the benefit of humans, and those committed to the Ecozoic, a new mode of human-Earth relations, one where the well-being of the entire Earth community is the primary concern.”

http://spinonmatter.carbonmade.com/projects/4800092#1

Carol Keiter’s drawing of dolphins jumping, one of the characters in “Adora & Vitali: A Spin on the Matter of Motion”

Hope walks through the fire, faith leaps over it.

Donations towards Carol Keiter’s writing, eBook, music composition, photography & illustrations are graciously accepted!

Carol Keiter the blogger with camera in hand at MMNY-MakeMusicNewYork

Carol Keiter the blogger in New York city attending a Make Music New York event at Times Square presented by Yoko Ono

Donations would be appreciated, since I’m not under any corporate umbrella, but drifting out here in cyberspace, fortunately connected to all of the information that has contributed to this book.

4:20 in Lancaster county Pennsylvania | Amish country

It’s 4:20 and I happened to be in Lancaster county, the heart of Amish country! Happened to have my camera and yeah, the day began at . Everything’s fine, I keep good company and have a Smoker Gard Attorney

Lil bit later Let’s say I was keeping my eye on a lot of new things, randomly making turns after moving in the direction of the Amish country, and getting away from the plastic-consumer civilized, uh hum, uncivilized world. to look at things with a different twist

Okay, so fortunately, the weather is fine and the Amish are out and about. I didn’t intrude on taking pictures of the kids playing in front of their houses – in blue clothes, girls in bonnets, boys with bowl haircuts…but I did get a few discrete shots. such as the Amish horse-drawn buggies which are present everywhere, through the side-view mirror of the car i was driving.

through the side-view mirror

and sneeking pics from the sun roof, uh, this was an accident that turned out pretty cool!

sneeking pics from the sun roof

Yeah, the buggies are there living along with the modern culture , you can see the grooves that the wooden wheels of the buggies make on the roads – over years and years – and residue from the horses – fresh every day!

remnants_of_horse_drawn_carriages

Continuing on

Stoney_Lane_Greenhouse

North_American_Pipe_Corporation

moving right along

I was feeling good and enjoying the view immensely!

frankly, in retrospect, this buggy blur going by has an odd reflection, as if it’s a premonition of something spooky!

buggy with strange reflection

and funny, though Amish strictly don’t drive cars or have electricity, Mennonites can drive cars, which are always black – the most toned-down non-materialistic vehicle that you can get..this one is typical in terms of the blackness of it “-)

typical_Menonnite_car

and though some people stared blankly at me from their buggies (i mean, there are huge tour buses that drive on these country roads, so I’m sure the people get over-saturated with people gawking at them !-) One couple waved at me in a very friendly way and this girl riding by on her bicycle had a genuine smile.

amish_girl_bicycling

gorgeous horse stride carrying the Amish buggy

angel statue amish star

Here are the same labeled photos on a flickr link!

and that’s all folks

just a ‘lil angel (that I drew a few years ago to send in a thank you note)

improveverywhere | this ain’t no joke | no pants subway ride

thanks to

Improv Everywhere
We Cause Scenes

http://improveverywhere.com

no pants subway ride improveverywhere nYc

improv everywhere no pants subway ride nYc

Because having fun, playing and joy is a great thing!

no pants subway ride improveverywhere nYc

Body and the Brain | Expeditionary Learning | Montessori ‘Hands-on’ Learning

Back when I was on my way hitchhiking to San Francisco in 2012, I encountered some teachers who had just attended a conference on the subject of Expeditionary Learning. I wrote about it. https://carolkeiter.wordpress.com/2012/05/17/hitchabout-san-francisco_expeditionary_learning/

Several days ago the subject of Montessori schools and hands-on learning popped up. I had to investigate if these are in fact, two ways of saying the same thing. I have a feeling that they are. Well, ‘jein’ as a German would say, ja und nein (yes and no) together! They are and they aren’t the same. They are two distinct schools of learning, yet, quite parallel and sort of extensions or facets of one another – in that they are each rigorously proponents of hands-on, getting intimately involved in the entire scope of learning about a subject, interdisciplinary and relying on your own curiosity to motivate you to further investigation. Both involve exploring cooperatively as a group and diving into the whole scope, rather than slicing off disparate parts.

what is Expeditionary Learning?

The area of study is called embodied learning.

As young children move and explore their worlds, they are learning through touch. Early bimanual training correlates with the robustness of the corpus callosum, a part of the brain that facilitates quick communication between the left and right brain hemispheres.

 

 

Just as body movement and involvement can have a huge impact on learning, so too can the spaces where we learn.

 

Corpus Callosum neural fibers connecting two cerebral hemispheres of the brain

Mind Shift – Why Kids Need to Move, Touch and Experience to Learn

 

 

This article featured on KQED news written by Katrina Schwartz March 26th, 2015 “Why Kids Need to Move, Touch and Experience to Learn” describes how Maria Montessori, founder of Montessori Schools, highlighted the connection between minds and bodies in her 1936 book The Secret of Childhood “Movement, or physical activity, is thus an essential factor in intellectual growth, which depends upon the impressions received from outside.

 

 

Through movement we come in contact with external reality, and it is through these contacts that we eventually acquire even abstract ideas.”

Maria Montessori was best known for her philosophy of education that bears her name. It is an educational approach based on the model of human development.

I see that yes, Expeditionary Learning is an extension of what the Montessori school education is for children at a younger age. The Montessori Method are classes which consist of children of different ages together in what resembles more of a real world environment. The younger children (age 3 to 5) focus their ‘work’ on materials that develop cognition through seeing, tasting, smelling and touch through direct experience. Elementary-age children in the upper grades shift away from the concrete (sensory) to focus more on abstract tasks. The materials and curriculum are inter-disciplinary, and children begin to apply their knowledge to the real world. For example, students may study a map of Europe, and not only learn about it in terms of geography, but also incorporate learning about art and history of the continent; a process which allows the topic to be studied from the whole, not merely discrete separate parts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expeditionary_learning_schools (ELS) are models of comprehensive school reform based on the educational ideas of German educator Kurt Hahn, the founder of Outward Bound. There are more than 150 expeditionary learning schools in 30 states and the District of Columbia. They are exemplified by project-based learning expeditions, where students engage in interdisciplinary, in-depth study of compelling topics, in groups and in their community in which the students become involved with real topics, in real communities, involving the various different subjects that otherwise would be isolated and sliced out of the entire picture. The emphasis is on people working together and involvement in the whole picture.

History class ELS NY students create projects suggested by their own curiosity

Open World Learning http://open.spps.org/expeditionary_learning informs us that Expeditionary Learning is built on ten design principles that reflect the educational values and beliefs of Outward Bound. These principles also reflect the design’s connection to other related thinking about teaching, learning, and the culture of schools.

1. Primacy of self-discovery – Learning happens best with emotion, challenges and support…students undertake tasks that require perseverance, fitness, craftsmanship, imagination, self-discipline, and significant achievement. A teacher’s primary task is to help students overcome their fears and discover they can do more than they think they can.

2. Having wonderful ideas – Fostering curiosity about the world and giving students something important to think about, experiment and make sense of what they are observing.

3. Responsibility for Learning – Learning is both a personal process of discovery and social activity. It encourages both children and adults to become increasingly responsible for directing their own personal and collective learning.

4. Empathy and Caring – Students’ and teachers’ ideas are respected and where there’s mutual trust. Out of the hierarchy, into having an adult being an advocate and older students mentoring younger ones.

5. Success and Failure – Students need to be successful to build confidence and the capacity to take risks and meet increasingly difficult challenges. Yet students must learn from their failures and learn how to turn obstacles into opportunities.

6. Collaboration and Competition – Students are encouraged to compete against their personal best, not against each other. Individual and group development are encouraged and integrated towards valuing friendship, trust and group action.

7. Diversity and Inclusion – Students investigate and value their different histories and talents as well as those of other communities and cultures. They recognize that diversity and inclusion increase the richness of ideas, creative thinking and problem solving.

8. Natural World – A direct and respectful relationship with the natural world refreshes the human spirit and teaches the important ideas of recurring cycles and cause and effect. Students learn to become stewards of the earth and of future generations.

9. Solitude and Reflection – Students and teachers need time alone to explore their own thoughts, make their own connections and foster their own ideas and thinking, They can then exchange these reflections with others.

10. Service and Compassion – We are crew, not passengers. Students and teachers are strengthened by acts of consequential service to others, and one of an Expeditionary Learning school’s primary functions is to prepare students with the attitudes and skills to learn from and be of service.

Hands Up | best 2015 Oscars speeches | from the vocal chords of winners of Best Original Song | John Stephens & Lonnie Lynn |

Hands Up gesture from a marcher at the Climate March in nYc 2014

Though it’s already almost ancient history, 36 hours after the event, there were several individuals who stood out. The Guardian has the full List of Winners. I have not seen any of the films yet, and hadn’t looked at any trailers either. And because it is quite a marathon show, I have to admit that rather than being glued to the TV screen, I was continuously going back and forth to another room, troubleshooting some functionality obstacles of two music programs I’m working with (and still learning) which I did actually achieve by the top of the morning!

So given the fact that I had missed a number of speeches, I have to say that ‘Hands Up’ the most provocative and articulate messages came from the vocal chords of the two guys who won ‘best original song’ for the Martin Luther King Jr. documentary, Selma; Lonnie Lynn & John Stephens. Here are their acceptance speeches.

The award was given to the composers John Stephens a.k.a. Legend and Lonnie Lynn a.k.a. Common. Their speeches were powerful. Legend talked of how the bridge in Selma, Alabama is symbolic of peoples’ struggles all over the world today. Common mentioned that the bridge was built on hope and welded with compassion – and that the struggle continues – “We live in the most incarcerated country in the world. There are more black men under correctional control today [in 2015] than there were under slavery in 1850.

The Rolling Stone have their descriptions of Oscars 2015’s 20 Best, Worst and WTF Moments.

I was quite impressed with Lady Gaga’s performance of the “Sound of Music” medley, though i personally as a rule don’t like medley’s, I understand that for time constraints and the range of songs of the original movie, that it played its part. For the first time Lady Gaga paired down to mere glitter (eyeshadow, cinderella gown) revealed that beneath all of the fanfare, she has a fantastic voice. She pulled off what the icon, July Andrews, manifested.

Lady Gaga dressed down to cinderella Academy Awards 2015

And as I appreciated several other speeches for human rights, woman’s rights and the recognition that this is a country built through immigrants, the winner of the Best Adapted Screenplay of The Imitation Game, writer Graham Moore, had the most bold declaration of the stark naked truth.

Graham Moore the naked truth

In my opinion his speech will be felt by many, and probably save lives: empowering those who are on the fringes and/or excluded, feeling outcast from the majority because of their sexual identities and unique ways of living in society. Right on for speaking with stark naked honesty!

What Will You Do? | Citizen Muscle BootCamp | “Man” by Steve Cutts

Regarding this post I recently did on my other blog https://digesthis.wordpress.com/2015/01/22/solution-to-what-will-you-do-citizen-muscle-boot-camp-be-a-climate-changemaker/

I’ve been engaged in the process guided by Annie Leonard who created the StoryofStuff.

ponder whether you choose to be a guardian or a destroyer

This is my take so far, on a personal level, of why I’m involved:

I really believe that every animal and species has a right to be here sharing the planet with us, and that we (human beings) are sort of the stewards (guardians rather than destroyers); since we are the top predator and ultimately have done the most damage to the planet. I’ve seen images captured by scientists about the amount of plastic that has collected in several tremendously huge garbage patches in each ocean. I believe that even what we do here, in our own backyards, affect this. If we are aware of how we use materials like plastics and chemicals that drain in water run-off, going into streams and ultimately into the oceans, perhaps we would tread a bit more lightly and be more thoughtful in how we direct our actions. I notice for example that Pennsylvania has a dramatic amount of sunny days, and that we could create a community that embraces using this renewable energy. We are all responsible for how we tread on the earth and it is not our right to consider it merely as a commodity to make a profit from or use, abuse and discard.

I’m sure that you would want your children to be able to live in an environment with clean water & air, where there is a possibility to play outside and swim in streams, lakes and the ocean. And for your kids to know what their parents have done to respect and love all of the different species that make this earth so wonderful.

I’ve seen that in parts of China, people literally have to wear gas masks and the children can not play outside, but in fabricated airtight blowup gymnasiums. “In China, Breathing Becomes a Childhood Risk“. Do you recycle paper and plastics? Do you think about how your daily actions can add up and affect not only your local environment but also places far away, that are ultimately choking and destroying animals’ habitats that are far away?

Think about this quote by Albert Einstein: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” I’m sure that if all of us would take the time to stop and recognize how incredible this life is and see everything as a miracle, that time and one’s actions become less of a commodity, and more recognized as something vital and precious. Being consciously aware of how our actions contribute en masse, to everything, and stepping back to breathe in just how magnificent this planet and all of its creatures are, will propel us to think and act differently.

And because I feel that this animation “Man” by Steve Cutts says it quite humorously and eloquently, here it is again.

“Man” animation by Steve Cutts displaying the history of human beings’ cruelty towards life forms in 3 minutes.

My Body is Contained Within the Limitlessness of My Soul | Jim Carrey Commencement Address

Every once in a while I post the exact same blog simultaneously on each of my sites. This is one of those times. It occurs when I come across something that I feel is so profound and important, that it must be shared.

It is this! Jim Carrey’s Commencement Address to the 2014 graduating class of Maharishi University (MUM).

Jim Carey’s Secret of Life The Journey of Purpose

I’m obviously big on the subject matter of Jim Carrey’s speeches, as I’d posted a blog referencing one this past summer. https://carolkeiter.wordpress.com/2014/08/22/love-over-fear-jim-carrey-supermoon-hitchabout-lakota-sioux-secret-within/ Same-same, but different. I also recently wrote about a similar subject; matters of heart and choosing love over fear. https://digesthis.wordpress.com/2015/01/07/addendum-to-journey-in-space-time-ignited-by-matters-of-heart-epigenetics-heartmath/

Jim Carrey announces that he’s found his ministry in the Church of Freedom from Concern (FFC)

You can spend your whole life worrying about ghosts and about the path to the future.

So many of us choose our path out of fear, disguised as practicality. He mentions that his father could have been a great comedian, but he didn’t believe that it was possible for him. Instead, he took the conservative path and chose a safe job as an accountant. And ironically was sooner than later ‘let go’ by the firm. Point of the story:

You can fail at what you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance in doing what you love.

Carrey says I’m here to plant a seed, to help you move forward in life.

Will that seed be allowed to take root? Or will you be forced by Monsanto to use their seed? which causes knowing laughter to ripple through the audience.

Life doesn’t happen to you, it happens for you. Ask the universe for it!

sunset

He goes on to say, I used to believe that who I was, ended at the edge of my skin. Then I learned that everything outside the vehicle is part of me too! We have no limits…you can’t contain the container.

How can you serve the world?

Look at what the world needs, that your talent can provide.

The effect you have on others is the most valuable currency there is.

Finding true peace lies beyond personality, beyond the perception of others, invention and disguise, beyond effort itself.

• To find real peace, you have to let the armor go.

• Your need for acceptance can make you invisible in this world.

• Don’t let anything stand in the way of the light that shines through this form!

• Risk being seen in all of your glory.

• The imagination is always manufacturing scenarios, both good and bad. The ego tries to keep you trapped in the multiplex of the mind.

• Our eyes are not merely viewers, they are also projectors, running a second story over the picture.

• Fear is writing the script; the working title “I’ll never be enough.”

• How tricky this ego is, with the promise of something, that we already possess!

• Let the universe know what you want, and work toward it, while letting go of how it comes about.

• Your job is not to figure out how it’s going to happen, but to open the door in your head. Then when the door appears in your life, just walk through it.

• Don’t worry if you miss your cue, there are always doors opening.

Take a chance on faith. Not religion, but faith. Not hope, but faith.
He says I don’t believe in hope. Hope is a beggar.

Hope walks through the fire and faith leaps over it.

Carol among crowd in New York city attending a Make Music New York event at Times Square presented by Yoko Ono

Carol Keiter the blogger in New York city attending a Make Music New York event at Times Square presented by Yoko Ono

Seven Cultural Concepts we don’t have in the U.S. | Live Each Moment More Fully

Seven Cultural Concepts we don’t have in the U.S.

The author of this article: 7 Cultural Concepts we don’t have in the U.S. in Mother Nature Network says at the end, “I’d like to integrate some of these ideas into my own life. Over the last few years I have dropped Christmas and Easter (I’ve been an atheist for over 25 years now) and replaced them with a Solstice celebrations; I have remade New Year’s into a quiet, reflective time (the antithesis of a party); and have incorporated an appreciation and gratefulness aspect into my almost-daily meditation routine. I’ve kept Thanksgiving, though mine is vegetarian, so the focus is on the harvest and thanks and not killing a turkey. And I celebrate Halloween some years, when I feel into it, and not if I don’t. And forget Valentine’s Day! ”

Liberté? Censorship in the West | Teju Cole The New Yorker | Kabir Chibber Quartz

I came across these two articles amidst the hubbub of the media’s portrayal of events in Paris after the attack on Charlie Hebdo and feel they need to be shared. Each point out the bigger picture, censorship and colonialism in the West.

One written by Teju Cole for the New Yorker January 9th, Unmournable Bodies

“Unmournable Bodies” article by Teju Cole for the New Yorker, the Eiffel Tower dark after attack on Charlie Hebdo

“This week’s events took place against the backdrop of France’s ugly colonial history, its sizable Muslim population, and the suppression, in the name of secularism, of some Islamic cultural expressions, such as the hijab.

Rather than posit that the Paris attacks are the moment of crisis in free speech—as so many commentators have done—it is necessary to understand that free speech and other expressions of liberté are already in crisis in Western societies; the crisis was not precipitated by three deranged gunmen. The U.S., for example, has consolidated its traditional monopoly on extreme violence, and, in the era of big data, has also hoarded information about its deployment of that violence. There are harsh consequences for those who interrogate this monopoly. The only person in prison for the C.I.A.’s abominable torture regime is John Kiriakou, the whistle-blower. Edward Snowden is a hunted man for divulging information about mass surveillance. Chelsea Manning is serving a thirty-five-year sentence for her role in WikiLeaks. They, too, are blasphemers, but they have not been universally valorized, as have the cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo.”

The other submitted by the author Kabir Chibber, a number of hours ago on January 11th, for Quartz Boko Haram is turning into the next Islamic State

World Leaders in Paris Today 2015-01-11 Quartz Biggest Hypocrites re: Free Speech

Kabir Chibber states “These are the biggest hypocrites celebrating free speech today in Paris.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

The schoolgirls were kidnapped 8 months ago and are still missing.

Boka Haram #BringBackOurGirls Quartz

This week, Boko Haram used a 10 year old girl as a suicide bomber. Last week, Boko Haram committed its worst atrocity yet, killing as many as 2,000 people in Baga (Nigeria). Most of the victims were reportedly children, women and elderly people who “could not run fast enough when insurgents drove into Baga, firing rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles on town residents,” The Guardian reported. Civilians gave up on trying to count all the bodies.

Kabir mentions that the recent massacre barely made a ripple in the international media. Not enough people are paying attention!

I caught this the other evening and thought it interesting. An interview with Nawaz Gerges, Middle East expert talks about the clash of ideologies on ‘Consider This‘ – an Al Jazeera America news show. He mentions that France’s secular ideology (i.e. dis approval of Muslim traditions such as women wearing the hijab (headscarf and veil in schools) causing some young people (mostly men) to feel disenchanted and disenfranchised in their place in the country. This can wind up motivating them to become recruits into the extremist groups. At the same time, he mentions that the extremists are trying to divide Western society. They recruit the disaffected militants (like the Paris gunmen who are like pawns) to carry out their missions like ‘hit men’ for the larger cause. As I listened to this interview I recalled George Bush Jr.’s (the President at the time) reaction and statements to the public on the day of the 2001 synchronized terrorist attacks in the United States, and thought, he was sort of guilty of the same thing. By talking about an ‘Axis of Evil’ and pointing to the Muslim world he was driving a wedge into international relations. Even if he had specified a smaller segment of militant extremists, somehow the ‘stamp’ of Muslim stuck as ‘someone to be feared’. Am I wrong or missing something?

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

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. 

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 other’s 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 to 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’.

2014 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here's an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 4,300 times in 2014. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

New Year Resolutions | Happiness through Action | One Mini Habit at a Time

It’s the Winter Solstice as I write this, and a new moon. I posted earlier today a blog https://digesthis.wordpress.com/2014/12/21/happy-winter-solstice-new-moon-be-like-water-aboriginal-dreamtime/ mentioning the fact that it’s a good time to initiate new activities and plant seeds; coinciding with these events on our horizon. Certainly the pagan celebrations of the solstice must be the origins of the tradition of ‘New Year Resolutions’.

At this tipping point, it’s a good time to dive in.

Bruce Lee learn to swim jump in the water

As we all are inspired by certain images and have ideals we wish to reach, here’s what I have to say. Happiness is not so much derived by a thing, but by what you do. Sure, having something that is an excellent state-of-the-art tool is great, yet it’s what you actively do, what you craft through your actions, that results in feeling excited, enthusiastic, joyful and a sense of accomplishment. It’s through performing activities and being immersed in them and witnessing the little thresholds of achievement and just knowing the work that was put into it, that we derive happiness.

I’ve recently come across a post of a freelance writer’s guide, in Episode #20 of the International Freelancers Academy. The topic is to forget goals, and focus on habits instead. Ed Gandia states that more than 40% of the actions we do every day are not due to conscious decision making, but habits! When we are doing something habitual, we are not using all of our brain; we’re sort of on autopilot. Our minds are hard-wired that way. The mind chooses neuropathways that are already developed, the path of least resistance. That means that as we develop new habits, we’re already on our way to effectively driving change.

Specifically, he talks about creating new mini habits.

Charles Duhigg has a TED talk about his book The Power of Habit.

You can not eliminate a habit, you can only change it for a better alternative.

Though we all have various goals, often they are out of reach because we are holding them out there in front of us, and not actively participating in them. And like standing on the edge of the diving board frozen with fear, the longer we wait to dive in, the more the fear envelopes us. With this in mind, the smaller the better, so as to not intimidate yourself.

I’m working on this right now; forming new mini habits which I gradually embrace and do more of: stretching, reading, writing, composing music, contributing to the book I’m writing.

The other side of the coin, is just being present and mindful of what you are doing at that time.

Language is important as well, because this is how we  visualize and conceptualize. Eliminate ‘trying to, would like, wish to’…and

We All Know This Slogan.

 

 

 

The point of developing Mini Habits, is that when we bring an action down to a small size that isn’t intimidating, we can easily jump in. Notice my change in words! Certainly, diving, jumping or just sliding in to an activity rather than looking at it from a distance, is enough of an action in itself, to push through a threshold; to consistently build new habits – gradually raising the bar of quantity and quality. Whoops, I guess that by virtue of being of western culture, the future concept of goal, slides into the picture. Best thing is to just do what makes you happy and be present as you’re doing it and go with the flow.

Bruce Lee Knowing is Not enough, We must Apply, We must Do

Don’t ask me why I’m on a Bruce Lee kick, so to speak,

Steven Ho executing a flying kick

 

it just so happens that the meaning is the important gesture🙂 Focus on what you wish to aim for, not on what you don’t want.

 

 

True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new.”  — Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Among many other achievements, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is the author of the fabulous book “The Little Prince“.

Image from The Little Prince written by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

 

Canadian Geese Vocalizing | Fluid in ever-changing formation

Living presently in central Pennsylvania, in the autumn and winter time, one can’t help but notice the flocks of local geese flying by overhead. They tend to fly at dusk, and I presume dawn, but I’m rarely up that early !-)

flock of geese

They are in fact Canadian Geese. http://www.arkive.org/canada-goose/branta-canadensis/

Canada Goose Wikipedia Branta Canadensis

flock of Canada Geese

They continuously communicate vocally with one another as they’re flying, each one of them calling out simultaneously. They are extremely loud. Here’s a sample of how they sound, no kidding, multiply that by 9! Hundreds fly by daily in large flocks, sometimes as large as 60 or more. You can hear them coming, believe me. At dusk, typically one after another flock flies by – just a few minutes apart from one another. Their formations are ever changing; continuously altering their positions in relationship to one another, gracefully and fluidly adapting in their formation.

The funny thing I’ve noticed a few times now, is the occasional small flock that flies by, in silence. What? How strange! I’ve seen this only a few times and believe I’ve figured out why. Those small groups flying overhead that are astoundingly quiet, are in the periphery of a larger flock nearby – which as always, are exceedingly loud.

geese on the horizon moving northwest

My theory is that these small separate groups are deliberately remaining silent, in order to clearly hear the adjacent larger flock nearby, which they haven’t yet caught up to.

It’s funny, I imagine them saying to one another, “shhhh, shut up…” so that they can keep their attention focused on the direction of the larger flock; keeping them within their radar.

geese flying above tree in their arrow formation

I like to draw analogies between different animal species and humans. The tactic of the geese is not unlike humans, they want to call out attention to themselves, chatting, talking and listening to any cues. And the most successful way to navigate through any path, is to remain flexible and resilient.

According to wikipedia, the Canada Geese are

extremely successful at living in human-altered areas, Canada geese have proven able to establish breeding colonies in urban and cultivated areas, which provide food and few natural predators, and are well known as a common park species.”

You see them in local farm fields and parks routinely. I see them flying overhead daily, you can hear them coming!

flock of geese at dusk

pair of Canada Geese
Branta Canadensis

Penn State University Extension campus describes these local Canadian Geese. http://extension.psu.edu/natural-resources/wildlife/wildlife-nuisance-and-damage/birds/wildlife-damage-control-6-geese-ducks-and-swans

Excerpted from this link above:

Canada geese mate for life, with both parents caring for, and aggressively protecting, their young. Canada geese in Pennsylvania consist of both migratory and nonmigratory populations. Migratory populations are the Atlantic Population and the Southern James Bay Population. These two populations nest in Canada and migrate south for the winter.

By contrast, the nonmigratory, or resident, population in Pennsylvania has grown from approximately 2,400 from 1955-60 to more than 150,000 in 1993. Adults in this population can begin breeding at age two and have a higher survival rate than migrating birds. The resident population consists of nonmigratory birds that nest and reside in the Mid-Atlantic states, including Pennsylvania, throughout the year.

I notice one of the links mentions them as a nuisance. I think they’re adorable, and enjoy listening to them and watching them! And I laugh to myself when I spot that occasional flock that are ardently silent.

As an avid writer of blogs, who is presently picking up where I left off with my eBook and beginning again to compose music, I ask you rather unambiguously to please donate, if you are able.

Carol_Keiter_blogger_laughing_2014

carol_keiter_blogger_contemplating_2014

I contribute writings to each of my blogs, often in the same sitting. Hours later, I’ve finished this one. https://digesthis.wordpress.com/2014/12/13/marijuana-out-of-the-closet-the-cannabis-cure-cbd-tincture/

“Man” | animation by Steve Cutts | rEvoLuTioN

I just saw this video for the first time a few moments ago (December 8th, late night 2014). Every once in a while I publish the same content on each blog, when I feel that the information is potent enough. http://digesthis.wordpress.com/2014/12/09/man-animation-by-steve-cutts-revolution/

This is one of those times. It is an exquisite telling of the story.

In his 3 minute animation, “Man”, Steve Cutts reveals the stark reality of man’s cruelty throughout history. Not representative of all cultures, but most.

It’s a scary bunch of images, that we really need to wake up to.

Something’s gotta change!

Time for an evolution, for a revolution.

“Man” animation by Steve Cutts displaying the history of human beings’ cruelty towards life forms in 3 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfGMYdalClU