Category Archives: Humans

How humans shape and mold the planet.

The Power of Love

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Where Every Trail Begins

Recently, I sent an email to a long lost friend whom I wished to reconnect. I asked if she would like to spend a few hours and attend the Science and History museum with me one day this summer. She wrote back and explained that she did not have time to cultivate a friendship with me. She said she was sorry for being so harsh;  wished me well and hoped great things happened to me. I wrote her back and told her not to feel sorry, that I was comfortable in my skin and that I would never think her harsh. I told her great things happen everyday.

Later, when looking for a new book to begin, my hand stopped at ‘The Power of a Woman’;Timeless Thoughts On A Woman’s Inner Strengths, Edited by Janet Mills. Today I need some words to reflect my inner thoughts and feelings about love and peace; and the greatness that envelops me each day, I need someone else’s words to express my thoughts about ‘the power of love’. So, it is very fortuitous that my hand came to rest on this particular book today. Below are excerpts from the book.

“Within the smallest grain of sand there is love, joy, history, romance and hope…eternal life, in changing form…It is Love in all of its manifestations, holding form together, bonding our souls to this earth and to one another.”

“Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand.”

– Mother Teresa

“I seldom think of my limitations, and they never make me sad. Perhaps there is just a touch of yearning at times; but it is vague, like a breeze among flowers.”

– Helen Keller

I think of my long lost friend with the same ‘touch of yearning at times; it too is vague; ‘like a breeze among flowers’.

Peace


Ineffible Hunger II: Ted’s Grill For Lunch

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Save me! Every time I  take a bite of anything these days, I wonder about the resources that went into it.

I normally don’t eat beef. I did recently. A burger and fries at Ted’s Grill. Did you know Ted Turner owns Ted’s Grill? Did you know Ted Turner owns 80% of all the Bison? As we walk into Ted’s Grill, I notice a huge Bison head mounted on the wall. It looked like a giant. There must have been 10 feet from one tip of it’s horns to the other. Impressive! It was huge! Needless to say, I set with my back to that wall and didn’t order bison from the menu…remembering the glass glare from the bison held on the wall.

When Ted Turner was asked what is it that you like about bison?

“I just, I really love them. I’m a naturalist and an environmentalist, and I was touched by the tragedy that occurred with the bison. There were 30 million of ’em on the Great Plains when the white man landed in North America. In the 1880s, there were only about 200 of ’em. I wanted to do everything I could during my life to bring them back. In order to do that you have to be able to monetize the surplus.”

What I didn’t know

about Ted Turner was that he is a huge experimentalist! In 1997 Ted Turner and his family established the Turner Endangered Species Fund as a response to the mass extinction of the world’s plants and animals. Thanks Ted.

Anyway, when the server brought my plate, I commented that the food on the plate could feed three people; and asked for a take-home-box at the beginning of my meal. I cut my burger in half and put half the burger and 3/4 of my fries in the box. Continue reading Ineffible Hunger II: Ted’s Grill For Lunch →

Ineffable Hunger: Starving for Purpose

Food, Home

There is an ineffable hunger in each of us that food just doesn’t reach. Yet we keep stuffing ourselves: we live in a nation of obesity; 32% of United States children are overweight; 60% of the Australia population is overweight; making the Aussies the number one obese country and the U.S. a close second.

Starving for Purpose

Why do we eat and eat and never seem to fill our hunger? My answer may be a bit hard to swallow. I believe the human species, with our ability to think, has an inexplicable purpose. How can the unexplainable be explained? How can the indescribable be described? What does purpose have to do with starving?

Wolves On The Run

I believe we are ‘Starving for Purpose’; looking for any and all morsels of food to fill this emptiness. The answer to this ‘ineffable hunger’, came to me in the early morning hours. I lay unable to sleep; images of wolves running through the tundra of Alaska to escape aerial hunters kept filling my mind. How can I stop the images? The cruelty?How can a woman, the Governor of Alaska, condemn these angel beasts to die?

Then my mind is filled with images of wild horses being killed and slaughtered to make room for more beef cattle; the United States Bureau of Land Management (BLM) believes this is necessary; as if we need more burgers!

Continue reading Ineffable Hunger: Starving for Purpose →

Open Letter: Obama-Biden Economic Team Members

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Dear Obama-Biden Economic Team Members:

Much of our foundation for health as a nation lies with the food we consume?

It does not take a rocket scientist to see the connection between the cancer that is so prevalent in our society and the food we eat.

The health care industry is the largest industry in the United States. It has 14 million jobs, with about 13.6 million jobs for wage and salary workers. Is this a good thing? Well, it does tell a story. There’s job security. We have a nation of sick people. Certainly the industry provides a needed service; however, there is a huge difference in treatment and prevention of a disease.

An important question for the citizens of the United States to ask; Why is the health care industry our largest industry? What is it we do that we all have in common? The food we eat? The water we drink? The air we breath? Should we consider what’s in the air we breath, the food we eat and the water we drink? We’re not stupid. Lazy maybe, but not stupid. When I hear people say “well, somethings going to kill me, what difference does it make which poison I choose?” People have already accepted the fact that they are going to die and it doesn’t matter what they do. So, it’s okay if they choose to keep poisoning the air, water and food we consume. What they fail to do is understand the ‘pain, suffering and expense’ they may go through before they die!

  • Chronic pain is major epidemic. Approximately 48 million people (there’s a little over 308 million population in the US) in the United States suffer from some form of chronic pain, pain lasting longer than six months, and Americans spend literally billions on medication to combat it.
  • WASHINGTON, July 7, 2005 — The pharmaceutical and health products industry has spent more than $800 million in federal lobbying and campaign donations at the federal and state levels in the past seven years, a Center for Public Integrity investigation has found. Its lobbying operation, on which it reports spending more than $675 million, is the biggest in the nation. No other industry has spent more money to sway public policy in that period. Its combined political outlays on lobbying and campaign contributions is topped only by the insurance industry.

Take a look at what the pharmaceutical and health products industry GOT for the more than $800 million in federal lobbying and campaign donations. With money like that being thrown to our federal representatives, is it no wonder they do not want to pass legislation that would take away these dollars!

With this said, I urge the new Economic team to look at creating jobs within the rendering plant industry. Then create jobs that monitor jobs within rendering plants. Rendering plants manufacture protein and nutrients (food enhancers) fed to livestock and poultry industries and the ‘pet’ food industry.

What are ‘food enhancers’ made from? They start with ‘raw products’: thousands of dead dogs and cats (many still wearing flea collars); heads and hooves from cattle, sheep, pigs and horses; whole skunks; rats and raccoons –all waiting to be processed.

“Every day, hundreds of rendering plants across the United States truck millions of tons of this “food enhancer” to poultry ranches, cattle feed-lots, dairy and hog farms, fish-feed plants and pet-food manufacturers where it is mixed with other ingredients to feed the billions of animals that meat-eating humans, in turn, will eat.” Continue reading Open Letter: Obama-Biden Economic Team Members →

Marie Antoinette: First Class All The Way

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marieantoinette1No industry or government should be built by coning its citizens. And yet, we let banks, industry and government squelch our ineffable spirit; succumb to their marketing and entertainment; buy whatever they’re selling to feel good about ourselves…thinking we have choices.

It’s not a matter of turning a blind eye to truth; but our trying to do differently is like climbing Mount Everest! We don’t just put off our dreams, we don’t recognize them. And, Industry and financial institutions wants to keep it that way!

Who Deserves a Bail Out?

Industry and financial institutions expects government to continually bail them out. Why? Does it have anything to do with their poor choices? What about the workers trying to pay for their home, feed and send their kids to school. The injustice is all around! The CEO’s want to go ‘First Class All The Way‘; like checking into a $14,000-a-night hotel; the Marie Antoinette for instance. Well, hey, why not?

CBS News

On Sunday, October 12, 2008, in the last five minutes of a CBS News, Face the Nation broadcast, Bob Schieffer talked about Edward Bernays. I was shocked to see the story aired on prime time television.The coincidence amazed me; as I was writing about the same story for this post.

Womens’ Emancipation

It was March 1929. Women had just won the right to vote: Governors who died in office were succeeded by their wives in such states as Texas and Wyoming. More women were attending college and entering the workforce; women were making great head way in certain areas of society. However, socially women were not treated equally. For instance, it was taboo for women to smoke in public, if they smoked socially, they were considered to be harlots and loose. Women were permitted to smoke in their homes behind closed doors, but if caught in public, they were arrested. Legislation did not permit women to have this same freedom as their male counterpart. Continue reading Marie Antoinette: First Class All The Way →

Food: A Dark and Dangerous Place

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Last week I attempted to do an update with regard to the Pet Food Recall and got side tracked: Pet Food Recall: Trail of Tears, which gives a heart wrenching account of the loss of my Golden Retriever, Annie Oakley. Today, I wanted to get an update on China’s baby milk poisoning and landed on ‘Police arrest underground gang ‘poisoning baby milk for profit’. The contamination has led to China’s worst food safety crisis.

This week, I’m taking a long look into centuries of food industry practices. Practices which began innocently enough, but, in many instances have developed into a dark and dangerous business; bringing disease and death to the planets inhabitants!

The Truth Will Sit You Free!

There are hundreds of reports and stories about the ongoing Pet Food Recall and its continued impact to our pets. What seems most important after reading these reports is to pass on what I’ve learned and to keep linking together with others who have similar concerns; doing so gives more credibility and a more effective means of convincing people to change what they and their furry friends eat!

The sense to be made of the Pet Food Recall and the ongoing tragedy is not something most people want to know. Knowing means you find a truth. What you do with the truth is what counts. My advise is to take a journey. Take time to take a deep look into the Pet Food Recall before you make any decision. For me, the journey has taken some horrific and outrageous trails. Continue reading Food: A Dark and Dangerous Place →

Great Big Love: Sweeping Across the Sky

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straton Open Space

“I like my life just fine.” I definitely agree. This is a line from Bruce Cockburn’s Great Big Love Sweeping Across the Sky.

I spent the day, about five hours, helping my friends get their garage organized for a ‘moving sale’. While Pieper (my Golden Retriever) couldn’t quite grasp the whole idea and was none to happy as I was not devoting every other minute to throwing a ball for her to fetch. She finally gave up and laid in the car.

After musky hours in the garage we headed to the wilderness for a luxurious hike. Drizzling rain drapes the forest and sounds of trickling creeks and chirping birds are music in my ears; wings flapping heavy, could have been a hawk. The reservoir is like a mirror. Pieper dives in and waves ripple across the glass. I met Dorothy, Bette, Dragor and Brody, new friends on the trail. Tails waged and words were spoken softly. Ions lay heavy and I lap them up.

Homeward bound I tread, too tired to stand long enough to cook: Papa Murphies pizza, chocolate almond coffee ice cream, preheat the oven, wash dishes and hang upside down (I have an inversion table for my compressed Intervertebral discs). Woah! I’m ready for a hot soak and some Bruce Cockburn and Nothing But A Burning Light.

Before my soak, I decide to do a little house cleaning, empty the two litter boxes and vacuum the area. While emptying a paper sack a zeroxed copy of a page falls to the floor: ‘firday, august 1, 2008’ a prayer of the heart– How wonderful! I decide to read it before I hop in for a soak.

Continue reading Great Big Love: Sweeping Across the Sky →

Dealing with Identity and Credit Card Theft

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Locking up your identityI wrote my first draft for this post on a yellow pad. Sometimes I like to write on a yellow pad with long and broad stokes; much like a painter would enjoy a large canvas.Telling this story needs broad strokes; I need to find room between the lines to identify my emotions.

All my identifying documents, bank card and my wallet were stolen from my car while parked at a wilderness trail head; almost $2000.00 was spent by the villains in less than two hours.

Beauty

Pieper (my golden retreiver) and I were parked at the trail head of Stratton Open Space, hiking on Cheyenne Mountain. It was Pieper’s birthday (she just turned four) and I promised her a hike and a swim and after a trip to the doggie store for a toy and a bone. I love this girl.

The hike was wonderful. There was cloud cover and it looked like rain. Not at all what the weather person predicted (90 degrees and hot). The forest was lush and green and a light breeze played in the tree tops. Pieper went swimming and we ran into an old friend and continued hiking with her and her three canines. After about two hours we returned to the parking lot.

Continue reading Dealing with Identity and Credit Card Theft →

Salvation: Walking on Four Legs and Wagging it’s Tail

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Salvation for me is treating humans, animals, and nature as a  single system. Finding my way to thinking about this kind of consciousness is easy…implementing the idea is another. Is this a mind-boggling concept or a simple truth? As I trek into the woods this way of thinking becomes a simple truth. Living so close to the mountains makes it possible to have a unique perspective; I can be in the wilderness in 20 minutes. The flip side is in the city with a population of about 370,000 in the same 20 minutes. Talk about mind-boggling! Anyway, going into the wilderness on a daily basis does something to your psyche. The sight of the various pine trees and vegetation; the smells, the wildlife, the sound of my feet on the trail, the crunch of snow, rustling in the bushes. Stopping to inhale and look deeply at where I am. Life abounds and surrounds me; hides from me and excites me! I feel like I’m on another planet!

A WARREN OF RABBITS!

Sometimes I feel like Fever in ‘Watership Down‘, Richard Adam’s novel; delving into the surprisingly violent world of a warren of rabbits as they seek to escape human development which is destroying their warren.

THE HEAVY PRICE WE PAY

Do we acknowledge the heavy price we pay for our over-populating and development? I feel a bit disillusioned and impatient with our societies failure to show respect and value towards all living beings; to seek a balance that would bring our world to the ‘Eden’ it was meant to be. Those who do acknowledge this ‘heavy price’ are seeking a balance, we treat all as a single system. We are aware that the places we let ‘slip and slide away’ hold inhabitants that define the balance we seek. As we seek this balance we look with a slow and long eye. We see the camouflaged beauty and unsuspecting inhabitants. We seek to populate and develop more consciously; we acknowledge those inhabitants as equally deserving to be here and that we each have a role to play.

MOVE MORE SLOWLY

000_0322.jpgThere is hope if we move more slowly and follow the lead of our furry friends. Take a path into the forest and unpaved trails. Look more deeply at the nature around us… salvation does walk on four legs and wags its tail.

 

SCIENTISTS SAY

Nowhere is Living holistically more evident than in the four-legged animal we call ‘dog’. Scientists say we have walked with and depended on the ‘dog’ somewhere near 130,000 years (one millennium is 1000 years)!

ANCIENT LEGENDS

There are two ancient legends which speak about our relationship with our canines. The Chinese tell a story about a great separation, as do the Native Americans.

Zeb and AniBoth legends speak of the separation between humans and canines; and how humans lived before this separation; the legends speak of how humans were able to communicate through telepathy; that we understood and respected all life and nothing was beneath or above us: we were all equal. A marvel of harmony!

 

HARMONY VS EGO

Where did this harmony go? Legend says our egos developed. We no longer wanted to travel on the same path as the other animals. We moved away from other creatures and forgot how to communicate with them. We lost most of the holistic approach to life that flows in nature.

The Chinese and Native American legends differ by one extraordinary event: When the Great Spirit of the Native American legend decided to create this ‘Great Separation’ an extraordinary event occurred!

ONE POWERFUL LEAP

Following our Angel BeastsLegend says, the Great Spirit of the Native Americans opened a chasm in the earth, and the Great Spirit wanted to make the separation between humans and animals permanent. The chasm continued to widen; dog looked to human as the chasm widened; then looked at the other animals…then at the last possible moment; dog made a powerful leap across the chasm; making a conscious decision to join humans forever.

OUR CONNECTION WITH NATURE

In the Native American version of the Great Separation, we did not lose our connection with nature; our canines keep the connection ever present. I believe a key ingredient to keeping our holistic nature alive, is to listen to and follow our four legged friends as they urge us to enter the wild. While there, if we listen and watch closely, we can more fully feel and understand our connectedness to one another and recapture some of the holistic nature we lost.

000_0194.jpgHappy Trails!