The Last Child In the Woods

The question of the day comes from a woman speaking at the inauguration of the new Wildlife Center (1) at the Tualatin River Refuge (Oregon, USA)

"Who is going to be our next conservation heroes?" asks Kim Strassburg, the refuge's visitor services manager. "Our kids. And if our kids are losing touch with nature?

Who indeed?

Richard Louv author of Last Child In the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature Deficit Disorder attended the opening and signed copies of his book. You can view one of his lectures here.

Earthwise parents concerned that we are losing touch with nature may wish to check out Spiral Scouts.

Enjoy,

Sia

For those of you using a reader, the video I've posted at my blog is from the Netherlands, and it is titled Discovery of the last child in the woods.

Endnotes:

Tualatin River Refuge

was established as an urban refuge to provide wetland, riparian, and upland habitats for a variety of migratory birds, threatened and endangered species, fish, other resident wildlife, and for the enjoyment of people. The refuge is now home to nearly 200 species of birds, over 50 species of mammals, 25 species of reptiles and amphibians, and a wide variety of insects, fish, and plants.

Habitats include remnant and restored communities along rivers and streams, emergent, shrub, and forested wetlands, riparian forests, oak and pine meadows and grasslands, and mixed deciduous/coniferous forests common to western Oregon prior to settlement.

These habitats are known primarily for their importance to salmon and steelhead, wintering Canada goose, pintail and mallard ducks, and for providing breeding habitat for songbirds.

Links:

Gaia's Guardians

Paleothea Organizes Mythic Motherhood Posts

I found this note on a Mythic Motherhood theme at Paleothea: The Ancient Goddess blog (1) and I plan to participate. I hope that other earthwise bloggers will, as well. Paleothea wrote:

Taking my cue from Between Old and New Moons, I want to suggest a synchroblog of my own. I would love to see all of the myth blogs get together to talk about Motherhood. And because my definition is sort of broad, I invite those who prefer to identify as religious and spiritual blogs as well!

Apparently, this is commonly called a syncroblog. Really? With the full force of the English language (not to mention Latin, Greek and all our evocative modern slang) laid out before us as gifts that is the term we have decided to use? Sad.

Update 3/31 I should note that neither lady coined the term, they are simply using one already in practice. Geek speak can often be amusing and inventive. This is not one of those times. Oh, it's useful. It just lacks .... poetry.

Later that same day.....still mulling over this: Word Geeks (of which I am one) will recognize the root word in that term. It comes form Syncretism, which, as the Wickipedia entry notes:

consists of the attempt to reconcile disparate or contradictory beliefs, often while melding practices of various schools of thought. The term may refer to attempts to merge and analogize several originally discrete traditions, especially in the theology and mythology of religion, and thus assert an underlying unity allowing for an inclusive approach to other faiths.

Pagans might find this interesting - it's something we struggle with quite often:

The Greek word occurs in Plutarch's (1st century AD) essay on "Fraternal Love" in his Moralia (2.490b). He cites the example of the Cretans, who reconciled their differences and came together in alliance when faced with external dangers.

The due date for such blog posts is April 1st.

Sia

Endnotes:

(1) via Between Old and New Moons

Peeps II Unveiled: Vote For Your Favorite

And now for some Saturday silliness:

Peeps II has been unveiled, and you can vote for your favorites among the 37 finalists.

If anyone is asking, my favorites are the Egyptian Peeps, The Peeps Camping, the Michelangelo Peeps and the Star Trek Peeps.

You can read about the first Peeps Show at the Washing Post and here are some of the entries from last year.

He knew he'd gone over-the-top when he spent $16 on Swarovski crystals for a woman made of marshmallows.

"After that I stopped looking at the receipts," says Johnston, a freelance graphic artist and photographer.

The money and time (two weeks) paid off. We were rendered speechless by the diorama's meticulous craftsmanship -- from Marilyn Monroe's sculpted hairdo (made of clay), to her curve-hugging pink papier-mache dress (her rump is made of a whole Peep), to the fine details of the tuxedoed Peepmen, each made of 61 pieces (their toes are coat hangers bent into L shapes, taped onto a dowel and coated 15 times with liquid spackling compound).

..."It's something I see and never think to buy or eat," Johnston says of Peeps, which he now realizes are "delicious." "It was just a total challenge."

Next year, I'd love to see some Pagan themes among the entries. Think what you could do with a Beltane theme.

Happy Spring,

Sia

Links:

Peep Research
for the science minded

All About Peeps at Wikipedia
Where you can read about Peep Jousting Games, Peep Viking funerals and other Peep Lore.


Photo of Peeps by NoNo Joe at Flickr

Change - For These Women, It's Personal

We are not the only ones hungry for change. From the BBC

In better days, many of these women led very different lives - among them a policewoman, a soldier, and a bank official.

Now they huddle in the doorway of a brothel in the downtown area, waiting for customers.

"I feel a very deep pain just to think that I was once a businesswoman," Maria said.

"And now I am a mere prostitute. Can you imagine?

"I ask God to forgive me and just to give me something, so that my kids will have something to eat.

Ask Zimbabweans scraping a living in neighbouring Zambia how they intend to vote in Saturday's elections in their homeland, and many will give you the same reply: "For change."

As in other countries we could name, incompetence, poor planning, arrogance, old grudges and greed are part of the problem. From a Daily News Editorial titled Man-made ruin in Zimbabwe

It's hard to see what more Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe could do to ruin his country, but the relentlessly incompetent strongman still had one more trick up his sleeve, one of the few in that forlorn country that isn't tattered and threadbare.

Unemployment is 80 percent. Inflation is over 100,500 percent. The Zimbabwean dollar has been trading at a rate of 25 million for one U.S. dollar.

Returning to the capital of Harare where he was once based, Toronto Globe and Mail correspondent Michael Valpy wrote, "The former gem of Africa, once prissy in its orderly efficiency, is now sinking into a rank detritus of uncollected garbage, potholes, broken traffic lights and collapsing public services."

Zimbabwe's descent from prosperity began in 2000 when Mugabe ordered the seizure of white-owned commercial farms, the economic backbone of the country. The farms went largely to Mugabe's cronies rather than to black farmers who might have made a go of them.

The farms fell into ruin and now Zimbabwe, once a major exporter of food, is dependent on international charity for its staple, corn meal. Fully one-third of its 12 million people are wholly dependent on international food aid.

Aids is also a major factor. From Development Outreach: (1)

Currently, there are close to a million orphans of AIDS in Zambia alone, an especially disturbing fact given that Zambia has a population of only 10 million. in certain major cities up to one in three adults is infected. In 2001 alone, an estimated 120,000 people died of AIDS-related diseases.

from the BBC article:

Maria has more reason than most to feel bitter about where Robert Mugabe has led his country.

Once the proud owner of a hair salon, she now works as a prostitute - driven to this by hunger, poverty and the need to support her family.

Recently Maria watched her 29-year-old niece die - needlessly, she believes.

"She passed away in December," she said. "She needed a lot of food and I had no food.

"She was getting some treatment for TB, but the hospital had no blankets, and no food to give her.

"We had to look for food to give her. You could see this person was dying not because of the illness, but because of the situation."

I asked Maria if she had a message for her President. Her reply was swift: "Please just retire."

Here's to change for the better, both here and abroad.

Sia

Links:

Shop for Fair Trade Products from Zimbabwe
(Note: Full Circle is not allied with this company, nor have we received any products or funds for this link. As always, shop with caution and common sense)

Country Profile: Zimbabwe

Art: Water by Paul Olaja

Endnotes:

(1) People making their own change (from the Development website)

...Many people are responding to the problem in innovative and effective ways. The Kwasha Mukwenu (Help Your Neighbor) group, in one of the poorest compounds of Lusaka, the capital city, is one of hundreds contributing to the fight against the impacts of AIDS. Twenty women engage in income-generating activities, such as tie and dye, and baking, and receive donations to provide schooling, food, and medical assistance to over 2000 orphans in their community. Another project, Mulele Mwana (Look after the Child), teaches skills including tailoring, carpentry, and computing to orphans who have to drop out of school and, like Kambole, have to care for themselves and their siblings. The Ipusukilo (Where You Can Be Saved) project on the Copperbelt provides alternative-to-sex-work sources of income to young women, many of whom are struggling to head households.

It's Good To Be The King: Lust & Politics in Merry Old England

...and they say history is dull. (1)

Meanwhile, Tudor's star Jonathan Rhys Meyers attended the protest against the planned motorway on the Hill of Tara. The plan will destroy Lismullen Woods and Irish archaeological sites.

Sia

(For those using a reader, here is a video I've put up on my blog, made from the first season of this series).

Endnotes: Added on 3/29

(1) History buffs all over the net are noting where the The Tudors gets it wrong. The creators of this series (like the creators of some recent British films on Elizabeth I) won't let a little thing like historical fact get in the way of their drama. Some scholars are tolerantly amused by this and are pleased to see people taking an interest in our collective history. Others are not so amused.

Professor Robert Bucholz, professor of history at Loyola University of Chicago, gives his opinion on the series in an article titled Corsets and Codpieces:

“I think the Tudors are always in fashion because it is easy – if wrong – to boil down this story into one of raw sex and power,” he wrote via e-mail. “And who doesn’t find that interesting? In fact, the real Tudor story is far more complex AND interesting – involving the haunting memory of the Wars of the Roses, Reformation Era theology, foreign policy, even the price of bread – in ways that actually affected real people’s lives.

....Bucholz suggests the real problem with paying so much attention to the Tudors is that we ignore their royal successors, the Stuarts, who tried to rule England absolutely. That family’s political and cultural battles – the right of habeas corpus, the right against unreasonable search and seizure, parliamentary power of the purse, the religion of the ruler and, above all, whether said ruler is above the law – mirror struggles in U.S. history. In fact, he says, “I would argue that presidential signing statements are merely the Stuart claim to be able to dispense with the law in individual cases.”

“These are all debates that Englishmen and women argued, fought and settled under the Stuarts, culminating in the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89 and the English Bill of Rights, the foundation of our Bill of Rights,” Bucholz says. “But nobody seems to want to make a movie about that.”

Off The Shelf:
Need a good beach read or something for your next vacation? Try The Other Boleyn Girl

Links: (Additional links added on 3/29)

The Tudors mini-series website

The Tudors: Season Two (free Youtube viewing of 2nd season premier)

Nine Things To Know About the Tudors

Tudor History

Animated video with some gross & grisly Tudor facts (the kids will love it).

Tudors Making some unkind cuts

4.5 Million People Watch "Bush's War"

4.5 million people watched Bush's War this week.

From a Canadian review of the Frontline documentary that aired in two parts:

From the first post-9/11 rumblings from Vice-President Dick Cheney wishfully linking al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein, the story of the war in Iraq reads like a how-not-to manual in superpower conduct: Flawed invasion plans dictated by competitive pride between Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, ideologically driven reconstruction plans based on massive delusions about the country and the region; sabotage, misinformation and intimidation by the vice-president against squeamish colleagues; and, all of it unchecked by a dangerously shallow president evidently in way over his head.

The casualties so far, above and beyond the 4,000 lives lost on one side and the millions lost, destroyed and displaced in Iraq, include: America's political and diplomatic reputation; the health of the world's largest economy; the legitimate battle for Afghanistan; the equilibrium of the Iran/Iraq balance of regional influence; America's promotion of democracy internationally; a half-century of consensus on just war principles; America's credibility on human rights; and on and on and on.

Truth, traditionally the first casualty of war, was actually lost long before the first bomb was dropped.

The Iraq policies of John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama all have one thing in common: They're meaningless. To paraphrase Obama adviser Samantha Power just before she resigned for saying this (among other things); whoever is the next president will have to make strategic determinations based on the reality on the ground as of January, 2009, not as of a campaign debate held in January 2008.

If you missed this, you can watch the full series online at the link above. You can also see maps, and timelines, see slideshows & video, chat, and read battlefield stories and comments from the producer Michael Kirk.

I would also recommend another Michael Kirk documentary for Frontline, titled The Darkside. The subject is Vice President Dick Cheney's manipulation of intelligence and his turf wars with the CIA.

Another in depth, fascinating documentary made by Bill Moyers called Buying the War answers a question we've all asked: Why did the mainstream media get it so wrong? From the PBS website:

How did the mainstream press get it so wrong? How did the evidence disputing the existence of weapons of mass destruction and the link between Saddam Hussein to 9-11 continue to go largely unreported? "What the conservative media did was easy to fathom; they had been cheerleaders for the White House from the beginning and were simply continuing to rally the public behind the President — no questions asked. How mainstream journalists suspended skepticism and scrutiny remains an issue of significance that the media has not satisfactorily explored," says Moyers. "How the administration marketed the war to the American people has been well covered, but critical questions remain: How and why did the press buy it, and what does it say about the role of journalists in helping the public sort out fact from propaganda?"

I would also suggest reading this article The Future of Iraq: The Spoils of War:

Iraq's massive oil reserves, the third-largest in the world, are about to be thrown open for large-scale exploitation by Western oil companies under a controversial law which is expected to come before the Iraqi parliament within days.

The US government has been involved in drawing up the law, a draft of which has been seen by The Independent on Sunday. It would give big oil companies such as BP, Shell and Exxon 30-year contracts to extract Iraqi crude and allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil interests in the country since the industry was nationalised in 1972.

The huge potential prizes for Western firms will give ammunition to critics who say the Iraq war was fought for oil. They point to statements such as one from Vice-President Dick Cheney, who said in 1999, while he was still chief executive of the oil services company Halliburton, that the world would need an additional 50 million barrels of oil a day by 2010. "So where is the oil going to come from?... The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies," he said.

Sia

4,000

Hey, Hey! LBJ
How many kids did you kill today?
- student chant during the Vietnam era

On Easter Sunday we passed a grim milestone: 4,000 service men and women have given their lives since this war began. Meanwhile, many more wounded have come home, to far less support than they deserve. We do not know how many civilians have died..why is that? (1)

I watch the News Hour on PBS every night. It's one of the few places where I can find news with any depth or intelligence. (2) On far too many nights, they end the broadcast with pictures - shown in silence - of those military men and women who have recently given their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. And when those pictures come on the screen, we stand up. We look at their young faces. We read their names. We give them our respect.

It is rare now for the network news to cover anything but the most local of losses in this war. We pay even less attention as a nation to the wounded. As a result, many Americans are not confronted with the gut wrenching reality of this conflict. We talk about the financial loss far more than we ever talk about the cost to young lives and unless someone you love is in the military you are probably not affected by this war. Not yet, anyway. The bill for this is coming due, and the next two to three generations will be paying the price.

AlterNet notes that:

A better number to measure the impact on U.S. military personnel from the five-year conflict in Iraq is around one million. That's the estimated number of U.S. troops that have had at least one deployment to Iraq, and all of them will be changed, in ways great and small, for the rest of their lives.

Why doesn't every, single TV news channel in this country show the pictures of the fallen? (3) If it were my son or daughter, I would want someone, somewhere, to show them this respect.

From The News Hour website: (the video is also at this link)

The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism found that the number of news stories about Iraq had fallen off dramatically since last year. The study shows the percentage of news stories devoted to the war dropped from an average of 15 percent of all stories last July to just 3 percent in February of this year.

In 2006, Donna St. George at the Washington Post noted that more women and single mothers have served in this war then in any other war in our history:

When war started in Iraq, a generation of U.S. women became involved as never before - in a wider-than-ever array of jobs, for long deployments, in a conflict with daily bloodshed. More than 155,000 women have served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Among their ranks are more than 16,000 single mothers, according to the Pentagon, a number that military experts say is unprecedented.

If you are old enough to remember the Vietnam War then you saw all those body bags coming off the planes. You saw the funerals, the folded flags given to the families, the tears shed by people who rarely ever cried, and the respectful salutes. You saw this every night at dinnertime. You couldn't escape that war. Your friends and family were over there. If you were a young male you wondered when your number would come up. If you were a female, you wondered when someone you knew would have to make the choice either to serve or run to Canada. Jon Stewart has rightly observed that we do not have huge numbers of collage age students marching in the streets against this war because we no longer have a draft. I do not advocate a return to the draft, but I do wonder: If more young people were faced with the prospect of military service - and we did not leave this awful task to the highly dedicated, the desperate, the undereducated, and the poorest among us - would it end any sooner? If Bush's daughters or Romney's sons were at risk, would the Republican planners have gone in so lightly and with so little care for their safety? If fewer people on both sides of the aisle had gotten deferments from military service in the 60's, if they had known what real combat was like, would they have allowed this President to take us into Iraq?

My Uncle's name is on Vietnam War Memorial. So are the names of some family friends. These losses changed all our lives. Like many Americans, I have relatives going back many generations who have proudly served their country in the armed forces. While I have not served myself, I respect and listen to those among my family and friends who have. To a man (and woman) they hate this stupid, useless, waste of a war. They thought we had learned better by now. They hate what is done to - and not being done for - this new generation of soldiers.

We should look at their faces every night. We should know their names, and the town they came from and uniform they wore. They should have a G.I. Bill as good as the one given to the veterans of WWII. Their medical and psychological care should be on-going and state of the art. We owe it to them. We owe it to ourselves.

I don't always agree with Michael Moore, but I do today: We should each call our congressman and women and tell them what we, as Americans, want done now, before many more families get that knock on the door.

Today, my thoughts are with those on all sides of this conflict, who will never, ever be the same.

Sia

From Michael Moore:

I see that Frontline on PBS this week has a documentary called "Bush's War." That's what I've been calling it for a long time. It's not the "Iraq War." Iraq did nothing. Iraq didn't plan 9/11. It didn't have weapons of mass destruction. It DID have movie theaters and bars and women wearing what they wanted and a significant Christian population and one of the few Arab capitals with an open synagogue.

But that's all gone now. Show a movie and you'll be shot in the head. Over a hundred women have been randomly executed for not wearing a scarf. I'm happy, as a blessed American, that I had a hand in all this. I just paid my taxes, so that means I helped to pay for this freedom we've brought to Baghdad. So? Will God bless me?

God bless all of you in this Easter Week as we begin the 6th year of Bush's War.

God help America. Please.

Links:

Frontline TV Special: Bush's War

(1) By some estimates, it is over 80,000.

(2) Along with the BBC and one or two other sources, some serious, some not so much. All Gods Bless Keith Olbermann at Countdown, as well as John Stewart and Stephen Colbert

(3) That's an angry, rhetorical question - I know damned well why.

Art: From Iraq Veterans Memorial Video Project

Related Articles:

From Coffins to Coffers

Wounded In War: The Women Serving in Iraq

Female Vets Offer Commander In Chief Advice

Oprah's Pagan Teachings

Yamaya must be smiling....

According to The Religion Blog at the Dallas News, Oprah's Book Club is promoting Paganism:

The latest selection of Oprah's Book Club is "A New Earth" by Eckhart Tolle.

Balderdash, says Michael Craven, founding director of the Center for Christ & Culture.

Craven, a strong proponent of "orthodox Christianity," writes on his blog for Crosswalk.com, that the book is little more than a New Age recycling of ancient Buddhist teachings.

This is bad, in Craven's eyes, because, well, because Buddhism isn't Christianity....he books like Tolle's "are nothing but spiritualized self-help and repackaged paganism that serve to deceive and divert people from the One True God and the salvation that comes only through Jesus Christ."

According to The Guardian:

Winfrey's decision to include self-help book A New Earth in her book club, and embark on a global promotional campaign, has turned it into this year's publishing sensation, boosting sales of the Penguin Books title from 500,000 to four million, a far greater uplift than winning the Man Booker prize might generate.

The American book market grew by 2 per cent in 2007, and Winfrey was responsible for half that expansion, according to Penguin's chief executive John Makinson, a former journalist who took over at Penguin in June 2002. The American Association of Book Publishers says the US market was worth $24.2bn in 2006, so Winfrey provided the industry with a $250m fillip last year.

Chuck (rewrite the Constitution for a Christian nation) Norris had this to say in an article titled Oprah's New Easter:

Since Oprah's endorsement of Tolle's book a month ago, about 3.5 million copies of his spiritual self-help guide have been sent out to enlighten the minds of people around the globe. More than 500,000 people in 125 countries have signed up for the World Wide Web seminar.

But will this religious text and its subsequent Internet churchlike gathering really lead you and our world to God's gates of splendor? Is it merely a coincidence that Winfrey and Tolle's spiritual quest aligns with one of Christendom's most sacred times of year? To me, it is more evidence of the paradigm shift in our culture from its moral absolute and Judeo-Christian basis to a relativistic worldview, in which anything goes and everything is tolerated. The fact is Tolle's "A New Earth" is being adopted and transformed into Oprah's new Easter.

...Tolle himself doesn't align with any one religion but blends tenets of Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Sufism, Christianity and other faiths. A review in The Vancouver Sun said of Tolle:

"His spiritual outlook has become more complex since (his earlier book) The Power of Now, when he dismissed external reality as an illusion and made it sound as if 'living in the now' was a panacea for all the world's problems. …

"In addition, Tolle believes outer realities -- including politics, war, poverty and even the climate -- will magically be transformed when individuals change their inner consciousness. This may be true, but only to an extent."

...."The reason Tolle's psychology and spirituality is marketed so easily is that it is an eclectic mix of conventional and unconventional wisdom, and Western and Eastern beliefs, presented in a tolerant, non-threatening and nonsectarian way."

Horrors. Tolerance, interfaith dialogue, and unconventional wisdom. We can't be having that.

Mary Friedal-Hunt says this about the book:

I just finished reading "A New Earth" by Eckhart Tolle, a book that sees humanity more and more evolving to the place where we live with awareness, consciousness, in each moment. He explains that the past is over, the future does not exist and that life only happens in the now, the present moment. Think about that.

Yes, please. Speaking as a Pagan, I would like more people to think about that.

What would the world look like if we loved living, really loved it, and wanted other people to be as happy as we are, in the here and now? So much would have to change.

Common Ground.com says that:

A New Earth is a profound guide for creating a better way of living and a better world to live in. At the core of the teachings lies the transformation of consciousness, a spiritual awakening that Eckhart Tolle sees as the next step in human evolution. This is a prerequisite not only to achieve personal happiness, but also to end the violent conflict endemic on our planet. Visit eckharttolle.com.

The New York Times is not quite so enamoured:

His secret, according to fans, publishing industry experts and booksellers, is packing thousands of years of teaching — from Buddha, Jesus, Shakespeare and even the Rolling Stones — into what one of his publishers, Constance Kellough, called “a clean contemporary bottle.”

“He essentially taken some of the wisdom of the ages and said, ‘Let me make this easier for you,’ ” said Vivien L. Jennings, a major independent bookseller in Fairway, Kan. “And you don’t have to read 20 books to get this wisdom. I’ll give it to you in a $14 paperback.”

What's most interesting to me is the fact that she has chosen to use the web as a huge world classroom. This has been talked about for years, but Oprah is making is happen. Leslie Poston tells us how Ms. Winfrey is reaching out to her audience:

Oprah is bringing her magic touch to the web. She has recently ventured into offering podcasts of interviews on iTunes, and teaching classes online using Silverlight and Skype....

You may not like Oprah. You may even think that she homogenizes everything from literature to news to make it all palatable to the Oprah Army. But you can't deny that she has done more to get people involved in reading, charity, self improvement and more over the decades than just about any other female public figure in recent memory. If Oprah sets her sights on something, chances are it will give whatever it is a boost into the stratosphere.

Oprah has now set her sights on using the internet to reach her viewing audience in a new and interactive way. Whether or not the subject matter is worthwhile is beside the point in this equation. What makes this interesting are the tools Oprah has chosen.

Silverlight is a new tool by Microsoft that is designed to be a competitor to Adobe Flash. Perhaps because it is saddled with the Microsoft label and a high price tag for developers, it has had trouble gaining traction against the now-standard Flash. Having Oprah in its corner could do wonders to give it the toehold it needs to be around long enough to compete against the existing giant, Flash.

The other tool chosen by Oprah is Skype. Skype has been around for a while now as a way to make cheap calls, video chat and instant message. It has had trouble catching on with multi-taskers like myself because it doesn't offer a way to use its IM feature in a program like Adium or Trillian. It's quite popular with people looking to make cheap phone calls and a reliable video chat; however, and this could push it out into the mainstream by showing it to less tech savvy people who may not have heard of it before now.

Thus far, I have only read the reviews of Tolle's book. Frankly, I am less interested in Oprah's message - which seems fairly benign and very familiar to us Pagans; yet another a user-friendly rehash of what other earthwise and metaphysical writers have been saying for centuries (1) ) - then I am in the medium she's using to conduct her classes. Does this wired trail she's blazing mean that other progressive teachers and writers can do the same sort of world-wide teaching? Perhaps. I look forward to seeing this play out.

As far as I'm concerned, if Oprah helps a few more people find a compassionate, aware path that compliments (and respects) my own, then more power to her. As things stand, Mamma Ocean needs all the help she can get.

Sia
Honor the Past, Celebrate the Present, Create the Future

(1) Including, let us note, Progressive Christians and Ecofeminists

Related Articles:

Gut Wisdom and Miss Oprah

Links:

African Goddess Culture (video at Youtube)

Art: Yemeya by Thalia Took

Happy Holi

Happy Holi to all our friends.

You can find some links about this holiday at Bridgid's Forge and Hecate has posted a great photo that will make you smile.

What a lovely way to celebrate life and spring.

Sia

Related Articles:

Wiccan Dance Meets Bollywood

Ganesh

Links:

Holi at Wikipedia

Recipe: Make Your Own Holi Color

Food Recipes for Holi

Indian Festival Food

I'm Not Having It

There are things I really, really miss about living in the Bay Area of Northern California, but people like this are not among them.

It took a while for me to get used to how very polite everyone is here in Oregon. It actually seemed kind of creepy, at first, as if they might want something from me...but they didn't. People in Oregon seem to live a bit differently. The ones I've met aren't stressed to their limits and sleep deprived. They aren't multitasking so much that their brains are fried and they forget the smallest things. In fact, most of the folks I've met since moving here are kind and thoughtful. Maybe it's because they aren't caught up in a constant battle with traffic, overcrowding, and hellishly long commute times. They aren't breathing bad air, either, and the ones I know aren't working 70 hour weeks or tied to their cell phones and pagers 24/7, like so many of our friends back in the Silicon Valley and Los Angeles. In other words, they arn't so overloaded they're about to implode. (Maybe some kind working mother should have walked up to that man and calmly told him that he needed to go to his room and take a time out? Oh, and will someone please teach him to use his inside voice?)

The people I encounter here have both the time and the desire to be friendly, even to strangers. Maybe it's because everywhere they look they are surrounded by some of the most breathtaking, easily accessible, well protected and healing natural beauty on the planet. Unlike many of the people I knew in California (who are blessed with much of the same) they go out and play in it. (1) As a result of all this they're just...nice. Go figure.

LuralMay's story about the rude man with the cell phone made me laugh but what amazes me, is that no one stood up to this fool. In such a situation I would (and have) said: "Excuse me, this seems to be an important conversation to you but it is interrupting my morning's peace. Could you please take this outside?"

I am about to turn 50, and I find that I'll put up with less and less crap as I get older. This tends to be true for most of us, but it's especially true for women my age who by this point have had it up to here.

Personally, I feel invaded and violated by loud and/or ultra personal phone calls in public places. I do not wish to be involved in some stranger's drama and I will ask them to lower their voices or move along politely, but firmly. I call this Glass Mountain Manners. I learned them from my mother, who like the fabulous Miss Manners, is a real lady in the good, old fashioned sense of that term. If you have GMM you say what you need to say in courteous, fair minded terms. You have been respectful, but firm. As a result, you have offered them no emotional footholds. They cannot use self righteous anger or outrage to climb the smooth mountain of civility and common sense that you present. (Oh, they'll try, but it doesn't work and they just slip and slide back down again, landing right on their asinine behavior.) (2) They cannot get around this mountain, because I will repeat myself, and I am happy to elaborate if they did not - for what reason I cannot possibly imagine - understand me the first time. So, they back down. They do that because I am standing there, looking into their eyes, and I am not afraid to (politely) call the manager and have them escorted outdoors. (3) Sometimes they curse or grumble. Let them. As a friend of mine likes to say, I am happy to be their learning experience.

It beats walking out the door feeling angry and thinking all day about what I would have said.

Don't get me wrong, I love my cell phone. They are changing the way the world communicates and empowering thousands of people. Just ask James (I want to have his creative genius baby) Burke: (From an interview on the 25th anniversary of his groundbreaking show Connections)

Cell phones/wireless media are the end of traditional news reporting, for the betterment of all via 20 million firsthand reporters, unfiltered by a centrally-vetted cultural bias. Local, culturally-oriented, witness-produced and better-produced news becomes coin.

I will concede that bypassing Big Brother's News Cycle is worth a little hassle now and then. So speak your peace but mind your manners. Oh, and help save a mountain gorilla by recycling that old cell phone. My mountain is fine, thank you, but her's isn't doing so well. Mess with gorilla Mamma and she'll rip your arm of.

Good girl.


Sia

(1) They are so passionate about getting outdoors you'd think it was some sort of religion or something.... hey....wait a minute...

(2) The same goes for people who talk during movies. I did not come there to hear your opinions, thank you, and we are not in your living room at home. If you do not understand the plot, do not ask your friend to explain it to you in loud whispers, just go home and read the book.

(3) Am I always calm and courteous? Hell no. But, in general, my life works much better when I can be so.

Related Articles:

Miss Manners: Don't Be Wireless and Tactless

Mind Your Cell Phone Manners

Vehement Anti-cell phone guy finally caves (humor from The Onion)

Cell phones in rural India

Links:

Freerecycling

Photo: Mountain Gorilla mother and baby
from a story on the latest threats to gorilla habitat

Overheard on a Salt Marsh

Nymph, nymph, what are your beads?

Green glass, goblin. Why do you stare at them?

Give them me.
No.

Give them me. Give them me.
    No.

Then I will howl all night in the reeds,
Lie in the mud and howl for them.

Goblin, why do you love them so?

They are better than stars or water,
Better than voices of winds that sing,
Better than any man's fair daughter,
Your green glass beads on a silver ring.

Hush, I stole them out of the moon.

Give me your beads, I want them.
    No.

I will howl in the deep lagoon
For your green glass beads, I love them so.
Give them me. Give them.
  No.

The Brooding Heron artwork you see at the blog is by the wonderful Jackie Morrie, who has worked on the lovely Discworld Calendar and other projects of note. You can see her painting of Sam Vimes and baby Sam here. Her latest book is titled The Snow Leopard

Serendipity:

I came across this review of a new film titled Unforseen when trolling the net for nature poems:

The subject is land development - specifically, what 30 years of profit-bent private sector building has done to Austin, Texas. It's a topic of crucial interest to almost every American town, village, and city, and it inflames passions on both sides....The film's case against overdevelopment needs to be, and could be, aggressive, airtight. It should play to the unconverted. Instead, "The Unforeseen" gives us . . . poetry.

I disagree. Poetry speaks to both heart and mind; it is only in the joining of these two forces that complex problems can be resolved. This is from the poem Santa Clara Valley

What had been foreseen was the coming of the Stranger with Money
All that had been before had been destroyed: the salt marsh
of unremembered time, the remembered homestead, orchard and pasture.

Indeed. I know this place well. It was once called the Valley of Heart's Delight. No one calls it that anymore.

As Robert Redford observes, you can't solve problems unless people are moved and inspired.

Like the goblin in the poem above, we humans are too often willing to trade what's irreplaceable and immensely dear for what's immediate, shiny and cheap.

How very poor that makes us.

Sia

First Poem: Overheard on a Salt Marsh by Harold Monroe

Craig Ferguson Explains the Vernal Exquinox

Now I get it :-)

For those using a reader, here is the Youtube video

By the way, where I live, spring begins tonight. The AP notes that:

Throughout the Mountain and Pacific time zones spring actually beings tonight.

Spring begins with the astronomical event called the vernal equinox, when the sun is directly above the Earth's equator. This year, that occurs at 1:48 am Thursday in the Easter U.S. time zone and at 11:48 tonight in the Mountain zone.

Truly, Madly, Deeply:

During our ritual, we will light candles in memory of Arthur C. Clarke and Anthony Minghella.

The Romans often bemoaned the fact that anything worth saying had already been said by the Greeks who came before them. Science Fiction writers often found that any story ideas they had, had already been written by the brilliant and prolific Mr. Clarke.

Those of us who admired Anthony Minghella will miss his many talents, his humanism, and his Renaissance mind. He died far too young and tonight we mourn the many films he might have made and cherish our favorites (1) among the ones he has left to us. (2)

The son of parents who made ice cream on the Isle of Wight, off the coast of England, Mr. Minghella used expansive tastes in literature and a deep visual vocabulary to make lush films with complicated themes that found both audiences and accolades..

"He was interested in the magic," Mr. Pollack said...the kind that occurs between people. Nowadays, everybody making movies wants to get the clothes off fast and the buns out guick, he was just the opposite. He was interested in the poetry, lavishing the view with story, scope and richness."

Goodnight, gentlemen, and thank you.

Wishing you renewal, creativity and joy, in this vibrant and magical season,

Sia

(1) From Slate.com:

Over the years, I've discovered that there's a kind of secret cult for Truly, Madly, Deeply. People who have no clue who Anthony Minghella is can passionately quote great chunks of dialogue from this film. The movie's potent appeal isn't surprising; how many psychologically accurate portraits of grief also hold up as romantic comedies that are both funny and madly romantic? I've recommended Truly, Madly, Deeply to friends mourning their own losses as a kind of homeopathic remedy. And I have one friend who watched it with his ailing wife only weeks before she died, both of them laughing and crying as they wondered what kind of ghost she would be.

(2) Including his last film, an adaption of a series for HBO that I love, The #1 Ladies Detective Agency:

Even at the start, Mr. Minghella said, the notion that an overweight lady detective would play well on film seemed unlikely. And the idea that “The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” could be made in Botswana, which had never been host to a major film shoot, seemed far fetched at best. But as he and others describe it, bringing the story to film became a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts, a labor of love that overcame considerable obstacles.

The catalyst was Amy J. Moore, a New York independent producer who had worked and traveled in southern Africa, off and on, for two decades. Ms. Moore first came to Botswana as a student in the mid-1980s, “before the roads were tarred,” and fell in love. Later she headed a South African venture promoting African films, then took a play with an African cast to Off Broadway. In 2000 a friend gave her a novel set in Botswana by a Scottish writer obscure at the time, and she fell in love again.

“I was struck by an absolute fable,” she said, “that leading a good life is possible; that being a good person is possible; that being a good neighbor is possible; that truth can exist alongside beauty. I thought, this African book can teach the Western world a lot.”