The Heart Box

I have had a propensity throughout my life that borders on the miraculous. Things find me. Objects. Many of these things are of little use, but others are extremely useful and frequently border on the mystical. For instance, when I lived in downtown Green Bay, the driveway used to change phase at lead\st twice during each winter, from relatively firm frozen dirt to mud and back again when it either dried out or froze thoroughly. About the same time, I discovered an old hippie commune that I spent time at when I was a child, was being torn down. They had a spring house that was getting buried under fill dirt and so I rescued enough stone slabs from the foundation to pave the driveway.

When I felt the need to make movies, a camera and editing equipment came to me.

When I was a child, we used to do scavenger hunts through the neighborhood, asking for simple things like a rubber band or paper clip. These events always found me to be the first one back with all my items, relishing my good fortune. As one finds relatively quickly, the abundance that can come with this sort of luck is both a blessing and a curse. I kept every stainless steel toaster that came my way for several years. Toaster ovens, toasters and electric rotisserie units seemed to be attracted to me and I covered a wall with them, making quirky retro art of them.

Recently, however, I'm finding that this abundance is worthless if not shared. Like with the electric appliance art, without giving it all away, these objects hold no intrinsic value. For many years, I found silverware. For over a decade before that it was rubber baby doll parts. When I first got to Green Bay, I was amazed at the number of single shoes that I would find, just laying in the street. I often wondered what event, or events led up to someone deciding to jettison just one shoe from their life on a random city street.

Two consecutive years in a row, on Memorial Day Weekend, I found sleeping bags in the same spot along the highway. And several times, while walking, I have found dollars, or fives, once even a twenty. Dumb luck you may say, but when you live a blessed life as I have you know that something larger than mere luck is at work. I have found white gold rings, which were eventually stolen from me, my own lost wedding ring (actually a friend found that one, in one of his garden beds that I had helped him till up the previous fall.) A tiny key fob with only two keys on it in a pile of rocks we had made on the shore of Lake Michigan. I have found two boats, three bikes, two guitars and countless tools, food and materials, just left to rot, blown away or otherwise left for trash. Useful things that have enriched both my life and the lives of countless others.

I do not lack much, except cash, but these things that come to me are either made immediately useful of they go into what I call the heart box. You may have a heart box yourself, but if you do not, I encourage you to start one. These things that go into one are your gifts or blessings. Things that have come to you, often unsolicited that come in abundance but only have value when given away. I'm not talking about cobbing every lighter that you ever touch so that you can have a lighter stash and give them away and the point is not to go buy a bunch of useless crap that you can give away. If you pay attention, there are things that you can share all around and nearly at every turn if you allow yourself to "see" and look for opportunities to share. I love to make wine, but if I were to drink as much as I make, not only my life would be negatively impacted, but so too the lives of those I come in contact with. Sharing my abundance allows me to do what I like to do and enrich the lives of others who in turn may not have had the resources to make their own wine.

Remember, no abundance has inherent value, until it is given away.

2012 Welcome

It seems that each year about this time, there are those of us who are making resolutions and taking stock of the many blessings that we have received over the past year. all too often I hear the sentiment, "Good riddance" to the old year and hopes for something better in the coming cycle of the seasons. I have had some experiences over the course of my nearly fifty years that led me to forsake the whole process of making resolutions, not so much because I would break them soon after the first of January, but rather because the changes that I seek to make are of lifelong importance and require lifelong commitment. after half (or more) of a lifetime, it would be nonsensical to expect the willpower to change any single aspect of my "self" just because I happen to change my calendar that day.
The spiral dance that we all participate stretches out beyond days, beyond years, beyond generations.

Although the best intentions inspire most New Year's resolutions, What bothered me most about them is the self chastisement and self loathing that is inspired each time we stumble, trip or fall along our intended path. Granted, some habits, vices or life ways do need to be changed, but to wait for this particular holiday to change seems to me, to be too much to ask. Even those exhibiting the most willpower will concede, an occasional slip up can not only be expected, but relied on. Being raised by cynical folks, my own life has been a struggle to see the good. Not just for the first few weeks of each new year, but each and every day, for life. Even some conspiracies are, after all, hatched and implemented by people who care, want to change the world for the better and strongly believe in their twisted way that they are in the right. Those who foisted prohibition on The United States of America believed that they were doing so out of a concern for the very moral fiber of our nation. What our ideals often lead to are ultimately hidden paths to some other dead end. Many forsake alcohol, only to be caught in the snare of organized religion, needing their fix just as regularly as the drink which they relied on in the past. I have met dozens of folks who quit cigarettes only to get hooked on the patch, chew or nicotine gum. not part of their resolutions I assure you. Loving one self, regardless of our failings is hard enough without finding ways to undermine that love further by casting our image of who we are as failures, or "weak". After all, don't we get enough of that from outside forces anyway?

It is a well known fact that many take traumatic events as wake up calls to get their houses in order. Other than the typical amateur night mistakes that haunt many a new year's party, getting falling down drunk or acting silly can't be classified in the same realm as a heart attack or death of a loved one. to make lasting change, we need to be motivated from a place deeper than the specific day of the year that is known for change. No matter what anyone says, who we are, or have become is based on years, if not decades of behaviors. Changing anything about ourselves in a moment that bears a legacy of time spent cultivating said behavior may work on the rare occasion, but aside from this, we are setting ourselves up for disappointment. I do not wish anyone significant tragedy, rather the joy of knowing that it is okay to fail. Even failing repeatedly to "do the right thing" can be fine, as long as we do not lose sight of the ultimate goal or write our selves off as hopeless cases. What changed for me was the finite nature of my New Year's experiences. My own beliefs led me to see each morning as a rebirth into opportunity to become someone more deserving of the endless miracles that present themselves to me, to act in ways that more appropriately reflect my heart, my spirit and my dreams.

I really appreciate the fact that my writings are read around this great planet. Those who care enough to pay attention must surely find something in my words that resonate with them, otherwise they would never come back to "see" what I'm thinking. Over a year ago I made the commitment to try to write seven posts per month. I figured that it was a bit more than I thought I could do, but as they say, anything worth doing is never easy. My resolutions tend to be made throughout the year and it seems to do the opposite of what I first expected. When I gave up on the New Years resolutions, prevailing "wisdom" and my own expectations were that whatever resolutions I made, say on June 23rd or September 7th would fail regardless of the willpower that I brought to the table. Not so! I still have my hiccups along the way, stumble, trip or fall. I still find that many of the new paths that I try to forge ahead along are just hidden blind alleys, some lead to other less desirable places or to new entanglements but the trying often leads to greater perspective, deeper insight and new growth.

There are times for resting on our laurels, but late in 2011 probably is not the best time for that. With foment breaking out across the planet, the time has come to redouble our efforts to change the planet in positive ways, kick out those who have become complacent, corrupt and cynical about change. The worst reasons to stagnate are that we have been telling ourselves that we don't deserve better, we just can't or that there is nothing we can do that will implement meaningful change. I invite the New Year with open arms and great plans. may you all find the power to keep your resolutions and that they in turn lead you to a more accurate reflection of your heart, your spirit and your beliefs. If we all work together, we truly can make positive change across the globe. Bless you, your loved ones and may the power to make positive changes in your own lives and those of others that you care about be yours this day and forever more.

Namaste'

Neo-Tribalism And The New Reality

In the sixties, many of us heard a song about the Age of Aquarius. It truly is the dawning of a new age, but what exactly are we talking about? To understand the ages, we first need to explain the procession of the equinoxes. Every 2150 years or so, the solstice moves through an age. The procession of the equinoxes slowly moves backward through the astrological signs. Each of these mega-time periods constitutes an age. The birth of Moses brought us into the age of Aries, that is why the ram's horn is still a part of jewish faith and rituals. The birth of "Christ" was the beginning of the current age, the age of Pices (that's what the fish is about). Now for those of us that are familiar with polychronic time, what I am about to say next makes perfect sense. Those less familiar with "native time", or "Indian time" may have a harder time following this. Just as the sun standstill (solstice) or the full moon energy lasts for several days, so too at the boundaries of these great ages, there are times of flux where the energies mix and match, ebb and flow, allowing the change to come and the old ways to fall away.

In our ordinary, mudane, world view, we get to the end of a (Julian calendar) year and throw away one calendar and then, just put up a new one. This year I felt out of sorts because I didn't see a single television show that had the theme, This Was The Year That Was...around the time that we change out the calendar, several things happen. Many of us make resolutions, we feel that there is a better us waiting out there somewhere and we resolve to go off in search of it. Some, reflect on the joys and sorrows that came and went in the passed year. Still, others look to family and friends for their annual infusion of cheer and cameradiere. Most of us do a combination of all of ther above. Likewise, in the hundred or so years around the end of one age and the beginning of the next, there are serious upheavals, new ways of reconing with our world view and new resolutions made that lead to better ways of living. Most of the strides that humanity has made in the past age have come with terrible costs. It is tuly now or never when it comes to trying to find new ways of behaving that will be sustainable if humanity is to make it through the next age.

I certainly will not be around to see the dawning of the next age, but seven generations down the line, my children's children's children will be looking at the world in the midst of another great upheaval wondering how they made it through the trials of hteir own day. With luck,and insight and great creativity, I think that we have a fighting chance at coming together under a new banner, that of world citizens and find our way into the new age with relatively little trauma and a minimum of growing pains.
anyone familiar with my writings knows of my utter dissapointment with the prevailing belief that humans are inherently greedy, self-centered and "brutish". Science has now proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that children are magnanamous, compassionate and giving, until they face hostility, neglect or abuse. Is it any wonder that we developed a whole philosophy on the concept of dog eat dog logic? Allowing ourselves to act terribly without fear of repraisal because, we say, we are "hard wired" to be brutish is something that I have had very little tolerance for my entire life. Abject poverty and lack of moral character are only correlated statistically because the higher classes just put on a better game face while they lie about their experiences and behaviors.

Another thing that many of us still hold on to from the past, that needs to find it's way to our cultural dust bin is the notion of Calvinists that bad people, making bad choices because of questionable morals is at the heart of why we have lower classes in ther first place. I grew up priveleged, and I know it. I was a poor white male and I was able to do far more than almost all of my friends who were either women or minorities. Now that the white male is becoming a threatened sub-group, they may soon find out the hard way what minorities have known for centuries. Much of what the old way of doing things led to was perpetration of lies, deciet and haterd that has flowed through generations like a blinding poison that cripples the majority for the beneift of a few.

Neo-tribalism is alive in the slow foods movement, foodies from all over the world are now concerned about where their food comes from and the quality of life that their farmers enjoy. It is alive in the environmental movement, where concerned individuals want to increase the quality of life for all people by saving resources and energy so that others can have a more sustainable life while they meet their own needs with less consumptive behavior. Tribes are forming around shared ideals, new ways of studying the world around us, new ways of thinking and the many new ways that we choose to communicate and interact. In these times it is not enough to weild a sword over some serf's head and tell them what part they are to play in the unfolding of your world. Mutual respect and cooperative action may be the difference between success and failure. I have always been curious about several religious sects who dissolve their affiliations with approximately half of their community whenever the community grows to about three hundred individuals. The new tribes will most surely organize along similar lines. It is hard to get away with anything in a community of 150-300. Anyone who has lived in a small town knows that. as we usher in The Age Of Aquarius, let us take time to consider well, both those things that make life, and living it, worthwhile and those that bring anguish and lack to the majority of our population. All things must pass, as George Harrison once said, let us choose which will be the first to go!

Make Every Dollar Count

For anyone looking for a new leaf to turn over this New Year's Day, start at the most basic level. We live in a world of dollars. They often determine where we will work, for how long and ultimately how they will be spent. The local currency that we use is just a reflection of our efforts. Therefore how we spend them can reflect much about what we do and believe in. I recently went to a website that offered to calculate my lifetime carbon footprint with the ultimate goal of "offsetting" it through reforestation. This can be done at several sites, and it gives us a way to look at our energy use in a whole new light. Since I started paying for energy, budgetary concerns led me to be conservative. My first apartment became a workshop for efficiency techniques and innovative systems that mimicked nature. Because my compost was working out on a second floor balcony, I had relatively close contact with it. If insects colonized it, they provided food for my fish tanks. The rich liquid that I harvested from the under-gravel filter was used for fertilizing the trees that grew along the street. Occasionally I walk through that neighborhood and marvel at the difference between the trees that I watered with fish emulsion compared to those that did not get "the juice". Closing systems allow wealth as well as nutrients to cycle, creating generations of beneficial results for organisms enjoying the rich environment. As I found ways to live better on less, I realized many eternal truths that have shaped my understanding of sustainability, diversity, the give away and permaculture.

Some cities have developed local currencies that allow large groups to integrate and formalize barter systems. We have all felt the warm glow of outright giving, but in some transactions we need to be enriched in a more tangible or lasting way. Understanding that any form of currency is just an iconic representation of time, of human effort, of skills, or sometimes of less tangible "goods". Recently, I have had the opportunity to fall in with a group of junk-pickers who meet regularly. They often find things that are valuable, but not for them. We try to disburse them to appropriate locations where the recipients can get use out of them, without cost. a recent dumpster score was several hundred dollars worth of specialty clamps. The proprietor of a local string instrument repair workshop was flabbergasted that he was being presented with these tools of his trade. Throwing such wonderful tools away should be a crime, but in our capitalistic society, our perception of value has become quite arbitrary.

I would like to make the case for taking a critical look at how every dollar, that after all, just represents how we have spent our life force, is spent. Do we want to spill our nickels into the purses of those who receive huge government subsidies? Would we rather give our money to those who handcraft items that will be around for generations? Do we spend our time rewarding folks who walk their talk, or those who are greedily lusting after money, power and prestige? These sound like huge complicated questions, but really they are quite simple. As one begins to research and understand what the marketplace has to offer, and how dollars flow in our current system, deeper understanding and insight make their way into our consciousness. Certain choices become second nature and when less time is spent finding out about what each purchase means for our neighbors, our local environment and our community, we can truly sat that we are on our way to sustainability.

When I first started down this road, I discovered that mankind's history in the Northern Hemisphere has been fraught with examples of raping The North, carting off it's "resources", and creating boom and bust economies based on this extraction.The process continues to this day, but knowing that, I can try to work my magic to charm the lives of those northern communities by taking low impact vacations there and trying to wrest as many dollars from the south as possible to redistribute to folks who live sustainably in these northern climes. Don't misunderstand, when there are products that reflect a sustainable ethic, or truly "green" technologies, I will reward them wherever they are, but when faced with a choice of two sources, I always choose the northern producer over those closer to the equator. Similarly, if a business owner treats their employees like "human resources", to be exploited, I have no problem taking from them without giving back, or taking my business elsewhere. No product is so essential that we couldn't make due without it and people who only know how to take are jeopardizing their right to survival in my book.

It is time for us to embrace a new culture. One of cooperatively working with nature, natural systems and one another to eliminate waste, fraud and corruption. Living is giving. Understanding this important fact has the power to unleash vast reserves of human potential that lies dormant because of the commodification of nearly everything under the current capitalistic system. By reviewing our personal budget and understanding how it fits within a larger economic system, we can allocate our funds with much more precision and make decisions for where to spend our dollars that can transform our lives, our planet and the lives of those around us. In the New Year, let us all try to live a little more and spend a little less, making sure to reward those we care most about and make a friend in the local economy who will then be empowered to do the same for another, on and on to the betterment of our respective communities.

Florida's Cold, California's Rains and East Coast Snow Records Fall Nationwide

The most common argument that folks use against the case for Global Climate Change is that we have only been keeping records about weather and climate for a hundred and fifty years or so. This is only partially true. Ancient literature and artwork may not have been done by meteorologists, but they did depict or detail conditions as far back as recorded history. 17th century prints clearly show the extent of glaciers in Europe, agricultural records from Egypt and Mesopotamia detail both floods and drought. People have always known that the environment directly effects our quality of life and noted the extremes and conditions that were either bucolic or harsh. Since the development of the thermometer we have been able to put numbers to paper that represent conditions, but saying that high blood pressure didn't exist until we had blood pressure cuffs would be an obvious misrepresentation of fact.

The ignorance that fuels the "anti global-warming" crowd would be quaint if it did not jeopardize our children's future quality of life. As we see records fall, in ever more rapid succession and in larger and larger areas, it should give pause and call us to question why. When I studied meteorology as a child, and again in college, prevailing wisdom said that relatively high and low pressure cells alternated with one another. The size of these cells rarely measured more than a few hundred miles across, and the affect of "steering" winds of the jet stream on ground level conditions usually changed on a seasonal frequency. The atmosphere was relatively stable compared to what we see today.

Another myth that the anti-climate change folks cling to is the belief that, "The atmosphere is so vast that human activity couldn't possibly affect it." The weather producing atmosphere, depending on how you measure it is roughly five miles thick. To give a sense of scale, shrink the earth down to the size of an apple. At this scale, the atmosphere would be about as thick as the skin. We can document the "Brown Cloud" that wafts off China. We can see the perma-smog over more and more urban areas. We can document human health effects from fly ash piles that result from burning coal. To say that we couldn't possibly cause change in the atmosphere again flies in the face of fact. Climate destabilization seems to be the rule rather than a series of isolated events.

Dependent as we are on conditions in far away places like Florida and California, it is time that we begin to see the climate as a unifying force in understanding of and commitment to addressing this issue. Rather than just hearing on the news that orange juice or strawberries will be more expensive at the grocery stores, or that vegetables will be more expensive next year, we need to understand our part in throwing climate out of whack. It can be hard to fathom, but imagine giant columns of air rising over the landscape. Heated air, full of particulates and hazardous substances tend to rise. I live along a fifty-mile stretch of urban development. The invisible ridge that develops along the Fox River Valley can often be "seen" on radar, like a mountain range forcing the air up and over the ridge results in higher precipitation and warmer conditions as we continue to burn fuel close to the ground.

In the Winter, we have an added problem when the warm air, full of it's hazardous chemicals tries to dissipate, but encounters very cold dense air in the area. We can plainly see our emissions build up under the "ceiling". worse yet, in winter we often get alternating winds from the Southwest during the daytime hours and from the Northeast at night. As the air moves back and forth over the urban area, the same bolus of air gets filled with more and more particulates and hazardous compounds. When you think of Green Bay, Wisconsin most folks don't think of smog. Each time I get a chance to get out of town, as I come back into the urban area, I see the smog and wonder why I have to be subjected to hazardous air daily. Most urban areas are near river mouths or in river valleys because they were accessible by water when that was the primary transportation method. It was a plus that those locations were somewhat protected from major storms, but the same morphology that protected us in the pre-industrial era acts to hold in the toxins that we spew today.

I come down on the side of independent thought, looking at facts and making up my own mind on these issues. The commitment that I have made to living a conservative lifestyle is based on the research that I have done, not the catch phrases of any organization or movement. Back in the day, someone coined the idea of "thinking globally but acting locally". It is my firm belief that this is an impossible task, designed to inspire inaction rather than change. I like the opposite concept. Think and act locally. When we look closely enough at our local environment, we can see the heavy hand of man and the destructive capacity of ignorant actions. When we walk more, talk to our neighbors more and plant more of the food that sustains us in our own yards, we can live better for less, saving money and impacting the environment far less than if we rely on others to provide our every need. When we discover the art of pre-cycling, (choosing to purchase products that can be repaired, reused or recycled rather than ones that need to be discarded after a single use.) understand the joys of walking and riding bike, learn to cultivate the soil rather than hate the dirt we walk on, and learn to live in harmony with the planet rather than fearing it, we can make positive changes on scales that are unimaginable. While thinking globally might sound nice in a sound bite, it has stifled change rather than facilitating it. Future generations will depend on having clean air, water and healthy food and soil. The way most of us are living our lives has degraded the quality of all of these resources. That is why I prefer to call "resources" gifts of Creator. We have been given Eden, but we have transformed it into the world that we see reported on the news nightly. The good news is that infinitesimally small changes implemented by the billions of earth's residents have the power to create miraculous changes virtually overnight.

If we made just one resolution for the coming year, to live as if the Earth mattered, considering the next seven generations as the Native Americans called it, the change that would flow from that one change would reverse the trends toward global catastrophe. Gaia has the power to heal herself, we just need to decide whether our species will help to recreate Eden and be around to enjoy it once it has been reestablished, or whether we will fall into the group of organisms who will never exist on the planet again. Extinction is truly forever. When we begin to live as if the Earth matters, it unleashes abundance unimaginable to those who remain under the bondage of "survival of the fittest" thinking. When I realized that survival of the luckiest is the actual fact, it allowed me to rethink many of the other lies that have been perpetrated in defense of the Power and Control model. The good old boys are on the ropes, what is needed is for us to stop beating a dead horse. Walk away from the fight, and put our energies into creating the New world Order that allows competitive and short sighted power mongers no quarter. Their "reality" is flawed and we can find myriad examples of cooperative systems that affirm life rather than tearing it down. Like Ghandi said, "Be the change you want to see in the world."