Tribute to my mother – Lois Vivian Johns – on her birthday November 2nd

It was in Philadelphia that my mother met my father

Yes, it’s that time of the year again. Today, November 2nd, is the day my mother Lois Vivian Johns was born in Pennsylvania. 

I thank you for providing me with all that you taught me and influenced me to speak my mind. 

She was a fiery spirit. Always had a lot of energy and drive. She would also tear up easily, she had a lot of compassion and allowed herself to express her emotions freely, that were close to her heart. 

James and Lois Keiter loved one another and were devoted to each other

She and my father met when they were both attending school for medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA. Their birthdays were just two weeks apart. They were born the same year. She was valedictorian in high school; student, typically having the highest academic achievements of the class.

They shared their joy of music and dancing, of nature and doing physical sports (she was a golfer, tennis player and skier). She prepared healthy meals for her family of four children. She and my father enjoyed art (creating and admiring) and culture, with th

Lois Joan and Carol

I am proud of you Mother. A women who always asked others how they were doing, and never, ever complained about her own self. She simply continued to always move forward and have a lot on her plate, to contribute to the community. 

We always had animals. A love of nature was always present. She maintained a beautiful home, with decorations, flowers, the work to maintain the lovely outdoors part of our property. She always put effort into maintaining things, and loved to read and keep her mind occupied with challenges. 

My parents together planted 50 trees on their new property (which was a treeless hill with only wild flowers. They created a mini forest wonderland that brought me into the world caring immensely about other creatures, and  biodiversity.

Halloween in her 90’s

I appreciate and respect you very much and certainly am proud to have you as my mother. 

Dancing with her grandson in law Wes Hornig at his wedding to Megan Keiter

outside trimming flowers on her property

Lois and her daughter Carol at a luncheon at the Lebanon Country Club

I mist you!

Tribute to my Dad – Dr. James M. Keiter – on his birthday October 19th

My daddy, James Marcus Keiter, was born on October 19th, so I’m putting out this tribute to his life. He was kind, very responsible and a devoted husband and father. 

Bleeding Hearts, that grew wild in our back yard.

He was a musician, a clarinetist, throughout high school, college and medical school. He decided not to pursue this career however. He also was a runner on track through college as well as tennis player and skier throughout his adult life.

James Marcus in his youth…running track

He had is medical practice as a physician in the first home in Campbelltown (where he’d do ‘house calls’). Later, he started an Emergency Room unit with several other doctors at the Good Samaritan Hospital in Lebanon.

He had a love for nature, animals and the outdoors, and shared this with his family. 

He and my mother moved to a new home in Palmyra which was built new on a hill, where the two of them planted 50 pine trees and landscaped a lovely yard that was a nature habitat for wildlife. They had a garden and grew herbs as well.

Here’s a link to spring photos in the Keiter yard, where among the pines and other trees, were flower gardens and azalea and rhododendron bushes. They also had a marvelous ebullient wisteria, which had a thick twisted trunk and full aromatic flowers (which the new home owners incredulously chopped down, along with all the bushes that lined the house in the front which were safe places for birds, groundhogs, skunks and chipmunks to pass through and nest).

Our back yard in the home I was raised.

Here’s a link to photos I took one spring of the flowers and trees of our yard.

He painted water colors as he approached retirement, and then prolifically once he retired. Unfortunately these images that I took have a light glare/reflection from my camera, and nativity about how to properly record them. But i did, and here’s the link to his watercolor paintings (and wood carvings). 

James Marcus Keiter watercolor

James Marcus Keiter watercolor Snow Drifts

My mother Lois and he loved to dance and would go out to dances often.

James and Lois Keiter (with Kitty Ulrich, husband Bob not in the pic) – who were each doctors and their best friends.

They also participated in a gourmet club among their friends, as well as getting together to play tennis regularly. 

They learned to snow ski together and introduced this sport to their children, for which I’m very grateful. 

I accompanied them to an outdoor classical music concert.

He was often working in the yard, which was a wonderland growing up. I grew up among pet dogs and cats, for which I’m very fortunate. 

My father had a workshop in the basement where he’d build frames for his paintings and so forth.

He and my mother read a lot together. He devoured books about history. 

They went to art gallery openings and concerts as well as supporting the local high school team sports games. 

Lois and Jim walking with canes in the backyard wildlife habitat they created.

My parents hosted extended family Thanksgiving Dinners every year for 30 + years, where his brothers, and then their children, all gathered for the Turkey and meal which my mother and father prepared. 

Rest in Peace Daddy ~ I appreciate very much the life you gave to me and my sisters and brother and am sure that your father Charles A. Keiter, a Lutheran Minister (who died 4 years before I was born) and mother were proud. 

Living with Less is Living with More: Co-creating a New Story – Our Relationships

I was going to tack this video within the post c-change conversations with respect to the spiritual relationship we need to co-create, with ourselves, between one another and with the water, the sky, soil, a spider, a bird or rhinoceros. Yet his words and viewpoint needs to stand on its own.

Living with Less is LIving with More Co-Creating a New Story A New Relationship with Earth and her Creatures

 

Living with Less is Living with More: Co-Creating a New Story A New Relationship with Earth and her Creatures
Our hearts and intuition contain the answer to co-creating this new story. A story in which we are not clumsily or hurriedly passing through, busying ourselves and not-wasting-any-time in our stress-filled harried lives.

“Can you imagine a more beautiful world your hearts knows is possible?

We have inherited a culture without any critical inquiry.”

 

Leo Murray talks of the need to decouple the relationship between standards of living and quality of life.

Authors, visionaries and thought leaders who are inspiration to less is more: Charles Eisenstein, Daniel Pinchbeck, Niki Harré, Yuval Noah Harari, David Holmgren, Masanobu Fukuoka, Bill Mollison.

 

authors visionaries and thought leaders inspiration less is more

Here is information some of these visionaries have communicated.

Masanobu Fukuoka states that man does best by doing as little as possible. He unlearned culture and science and realizes that nature does everything.

Masanobu Fukuoka Talks About the One Straw Revolution

Charles Eisenstein’s speech New Zealand

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Niki Harré talks about her book “Psychology for a Better World”

Niki Harré talk about her book “Psychology for a Better World”

 

 

 

Niki Harré talks in this video about the Psychology and the Infinite Game In it she describes the distinction between the Finite and Infinite Games.

 

The purpose of the infinite game is to continue the game.

The purpose of the finite game is to win.

The infinite game invites others in and is full of creativity, the rules continually change and all are flexible in their interactions.

The finite game includes only select people, it is all about replication and does not bend. In life, the finite game winnings are such as getting a trophy, owning property, getting a degree, a promotion, publishing an article, get funded for a program.

She talks of the amazing power of symbol and metaphor. And that in order to keep the infinite game in play, we need to trust people and promote creativity. It’s up to all of us to bring this awareness into our workplace, schools and communities.

Yuval Harari Sapiens A Brief History of Humankind – 5 year anniversary

A Brief History of Humankind Yuval Noah Harari

 

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

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carol_keiter_greg_altman copy

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why the pain?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gabor Maté is a Hungarian-born Canadian physician

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carol Keiter le_blogger, writer & illustrator, musician & composer